2021 China Integrated Circuit Market Research Report Overview

Based on data from WSTS and IC Insights, China’s share of MPU and logic circuits has increased over the past three years, while DRAM has declined and analog circuits, NAND Flash, and MCU have remained relatively stable.

Storage chips such as NAND Flash and DRAM dominate the market, together with low‑demand NOR Flash, accounting for at least 30% of domestic chip share, indicating strong demand for storage solutions.

Logic chips now represent more than a quarter of the market, driven by growing applications in ASIC, FPGA, CPU, and GPU across cloud computing and AI industries, as well as continued demand for traditional logic gates.

Analog circuits, essential for IoT and communications, are gaining market share as communication devices evolve.

Domestic CPU development is modest, with breakthroughs mainly in mobile CPUs; most R&D focuses on application‑level solutions rather than foundational architecture, and Chinese firms rely heavily on IP licensing.

CPU instruction sets are split between CISC (primarily x86) and RISC (ARM, MIPS, RISC‑V, PowerPC, Alpha), with ARM dominating the RISC market; Chinese companies lag in low‑level IP design.

GPU chips, originally for graphics, now power AI training platforms; in Q4 2020, Intel led the PC GPU market with 69% share, while AMD and Nvidia split the remainder. No Chinese company has significant market penetration.

FPGA devices, known as field‑programmable gate arrays, offer short development cycles, low latency, and low power consumption, finding use in video processing, communications, and AI, though their compute power is lower than GPUs.

MRFR projects the global FPGA market to reach US$12.5 billion by 2025, with a 10.43% CAGR; China’s FPGA market is expected to grow from ¥17.6 billion in 2019 to nearly ¥46 billion by 2023, yet domestic FPGA market share remains below 1%.

AI chips, encompassing CPLD, FPGA, and GPU, are increasingly specialized for training (high compute, precision) and inference (low power, cost). Chinese companies such as Huawei HiSilicon, Cambricon, Tianji Zhixin, and Suiyuan Technology have launched cloud inference products covering ASIC and GPGPU.

ASIC chips, with simpler design and development, are seen as a strategic path for China to achieve a leap in AI compute capabilities.

Flash storage chips remain a weak point in China’s semiconductor ecosystem; while a few domestic firms produce NOR Flash, most storage chips are dominated by Samsung, Toshiba, and Micron. SRAM offers fast access at high cost, whereas DRAM provides slower but cheaper large‑capacity storage.

Overall, China’s semiconductor industry faces challenges in design and manufacturing of advanced storage and logic chips, but opportunities exist in scaling production, advancing NAND Flash and DRAM domestically, and leveraging global chip shortages.