Recently, Goke Micro and Changjiang Storage formally signed a long-term supply agreement in Changsha, Hunan. At the signing ceremony, Guoke pre-released a solid-state drive equipped with YMTC’s 64-layer 3D NAND particles.

Solid-state drives are a type of memory and are one of the three pillars of the entire semiconductor industry. According to data released by the Global Semiconductor Trade Association (WSTS), the global semiconductor market in 2019 was US$500 billion, of which the memory market was US$115.5 billion, accounting for up to 22%.

At present, the global memory and related chip market has been highly concentrated or even monopolized, and the degree of monopoly has continued to increase in recent years. According to ICInsights data: South Korea’s Samsung, Hynix and American Micron Technology together account for 95% of the global memory chip market share. Among them, Samsung occupies the largest market share, reaching 44.5%, and Hynix and Micron, which are ranked second and third, account for 27.9% and 22.9% of the market respectively.

my country is the world’s largest importer of memory and memory chips. Due to the monopoly of core technologies, the development speed of my country’s storage industry is relatively slow. Coupled with the rigid demand for memory in the electronics industry, the price of memory chips has risen by as much as 40% last year alone.

Under this predicament, the road to localization of memory chips is imperative.

Grasp the demand, domestic substitution

Among the rising stars of memory chips in my country, Guoke can be described as one of the outstanding representatives. In 2008, Guoke Microelectronics Co., Ltd. was established in Changsha, dedicated to the development of large-scale integrated circuits and solutions in the fields of intelligent set-top boxes, intelligent monitoring, storage, and the Internet of Things.

Due to its long-term research in the field of ultra-high-definition video chips, it will be the general trend of the future for Guoke Micro to capture the storage demand caused by the huge amount of data. As a result, Guoke Micro began to lay out its chips and storage products.

In terms of chips, in 2015, Goke Micro and Wuhan Xinxin started 3D NAND technology cooperation; in 2016, Yangtze Memory was established, and the first tape-out of 32-layer 3D NAND was achieved the following year. The cooperation between the two parties was further strengthened, and Goke started particle adaptation; In 2018, YMTC achieved the first tape-out of 64-layer 3D NAND, and Guoke Microelectronics carried out large-scale joint debugging and adaptation tests for its 32-layer and 64-layer particles.

In terms of products, Guoke has pre-released the 311C-Y domestic solid-state drive. It is reported that the 311C-Y solid-state drive is equipped with the GK2302 self-developed controller chip GK2302, which adopts the domestic embedded CPU IP core and the original NANDXtra reliability engine of GokeMicro.

In addition, the 311C-Y SSD is also equipped with a 64-layer TLC 3D NAND chip of YMTC’s Xtacking architecture. The Xtacking architecture can process peripheral circuits and storage units on two separate wafers. Through wafer bonding technology Combining the two into one, NAND can achieve faster data transfer speed, higher density and more functional expansion capabilities in the future.

At present, Goke Micro GK2302 series main control chips already support YMTC chips, and the latest new generation main control GK2302V200 will also be adapted to YMTC 128-layer QLC and TLC particles.

Driven by dual cores, Guoke Micro 311C-Y solid-state hard disk read and write bandwidth reaches 560/480MB/s, and IOPS reaches 78K/86K.

In order to achieve domestic replacement, Guoke Micro also developed a solid-state hard disk management tool, supports domestic independent operating systems, and can realize active hard disk life alarm, online firmware push and upgrade.

The IDC report shows that the average growth rate of China’s data space is expected to reach 30% in the next 7 years, and by 2025, China will have the largest data space in the world.

The huge amount of data will become the cornerstone to support my country’s storage industry. Guoke Micro has already planned to develop a solid-state storage controller with PCIe interface of a new generation process platform, and develop a next-generation controller chip that supports the characteristics of QLC 3D NAND chips. At the same time, Guoke will further develop the solid-state drive product series, and plans to add two product series of hard drives to meet the needs of the industrial high-reliability industry and the data communication industry.

High-definition video, AI + security

The rapid growth of the total amount of data in my country is due to the growth of the connected population and the surge of video surveillance infrastructure, which is an excellent opportunity for smart cities, smart security and artificial intelligence related industries.

After years of development, the security industry has formed a relatively complete market structure and industrial chain. In security products, cameras, switches, IPC (network cameras), hard disk recorders, various servers and other equipment require chips. Chips play a central role in security systems. The main security monitoring chips can be divided into four categories: ISP chips, DVR SoC chips, IPC SoC chips, and NVR SoC chips.

From a technical point of view, IPC SoC chips have the greatest growth potential. IPC SoC chips usually integrate embedded processor (CPU), image signal processing (ISP) module, video and audio coding module, network interface module, security encryption module and memory subsystem, and some chips also integrate video intelligent processing module.

Guoke Micro has been deeply involved in the field of security video surveillance for many years, and has deployed a variety of chip products, covering H. 264 and H. 265 encoding standard, and 1080P to 4K full HD resolution, which can be widely used in safe cities, communities, buildings, smart homes and other market segments.

After the traditional security industry has been digitized, networked, and high-definition, it is integrating with artificial intelligence and upgrading to intelligent security. Aiming at the contradiction between the massive video surveillance data and the bottleneck of human analysis, the structured processing of video through artificial intelligence can establish a mapping between surveillance data and useful information, thus helping traditional security to realize the transition from “seeing clearly” to “seeing clearly”. The change from “understand” to “see fast”.

The evolution trend of “security + artificial intelligence” transformation and upgrading is both an opportunity and a challenge, and Goke has taken active measures to deal with it.

Guoke Micro has increased investment in the research and development of chip products in the direction of “security + artificial intelligence”. Once the related products are put into production, they will provide cost-effective and low-power chip products for the entire “security + artificial intelligence” industry, thus continuing to promote the security industry. upgrade. At the same time, for the existing security video chip products, Guoke Micro is integrating artificial intelligence algorithms such as humanoid tracking to enhance the added value of existing products to meet the current needs of intelligence.

At present, according to the “high-definition video” strategy, Goke Micro has continuously carried out corresponding technology research and development and independent innovation in key markets. Advanced security encryption, solid-state storage control chips, multi-wafer packaging, and embedded software development have formed independent core technologies, and based on breakthroughs in these core technologies, four independent technology systems and industrialization systems have been formed.

Taking advantage of the huge domestic demand market and continuously optimizing its own development capabilities, Guoke Micro has established a firm foothold on the road of domestic substitution.