The hardware is too bitter, and the talent gap of chips exceeds 300,000： Tsinghua graduates all change careers.

　　"The chip is not omnipotent, but it can’t be done without a chip." During the 2019 World SEMIconductor Conference, Julong, global vice president of Semi and president of China, described the importance of chips.

　　However, in this key area, China’s talent pool is far behind the development of the industry. According to incomplete statistics, there are more than 25 integrated circuit production lines under construction in China. The White Paper on Talents in China Integrated Circuit Industry (2017-2018) points out that by 2020, the demand for talents in China’s integrated circuit industry will be about 720,000, while the existing talent stock in China is 400,000, and the talent gap will reach 320,000.

　　The huge gap directly leads to the battle for people by enterprises. Wei Xu, Secretary-General of Shanghai IC Industry Association, pointed out that due to the rapid development of industry and the huge talent gap, domestic enterprises tried their best to attract talents, especially the manufacturing industry, which caused malicious competition and led to a sharp rise in the employment cost of enterprises.

　　"The situation of digging people from each other is very serious now, so the cost of technicians of the same type in our industry is actually higher than that of overseas." Yu Xiekang, Chairman of Huajin Semiconductor Packaging Pilot Technology R&D Center Co., Ltd. and Vice Chairman of China Semiconductor Industry Association, also raised such concerns when interviewed by China Business News.

　　The integrated circuit industry not only covers the upper and lower industrial chains of design, manufacturing, packaging and testing, but also EDA software, equipment and materials industries. A number of people in the industry told reporters that China has too little chip talents, and all industries are in short supply.

　　A person in charge of Horizon Chip once told reporters that it is too hard to make chips and other hardware, and the benefits are not high. Many outstanding students choose to engage in finance and the Internet after graduation. "Even students who graduated from Tsinghua University Microelectronics Institute will switch to finance or engage in the Internet. I think in fact, in the last ten years in China, there have been too many opportunities to make money. It is very hard to make chips, but it is not so easy to get money. "

　　He pointed out that at present, an ordinary chip design company needs about 10 million dollars for a project to make SoC chips. "Once the market positioning is not accurate, all this money will be wasted."

　　There are two kinds of people who make chips, either extremely smart (hair loss) or old (white hair). Joseph Xie, general manager of Xinmeng Technology and founder of Aixin Education, described the chip practitioners in a forum of the World Semiconductor Conference.

　　Han Xiaomin, general manager of the IC Industry Research Center of CCID Research Institute, also told reporters that the rapid development of the Internet in China also has a crowding-out effect on hardware industries such as chips to some extent. In the 1980s and 1990s, the semiconductor major was studied by the best people in Taiwan, China. At present, the best students in mainland China are in the School of Economics and Management and the School of Computer Science. "The major of electronics is actually not bad, but it is still a top-ranked major. Relatively speaking, this industry can’t provide jobs with market competitiveness, and it is facing the problem of insufficient overall quality of personnel or even shortage of personnel."

　　Wei Xu said that the number of graduates majoring in integrated circuits in China is around 200,000, but less than 30,000 people have entered the integrated circuit industry. Although there are graduates majoring in computer, physics, automation, etc. who flow to the integrated circuit industry, it is impossible to meet the industry’s demand for talents simply by relying on colleges and universities to train and transport talents. It is urgent to greatly increase the enrollment of integrated circuit majors.

　　However, on the other hand, for chip companies, top students in universities are not equal to real talents. Earlier, an integrated circuit investor told reporters that the outstanding talents needed by enterprises can be directly used, while the newly graduated students need a lot of training, which is far from the two.

　　In terms of how to cultivate talents, Wei Xu believes that we should organically combine the aspects of university training, enterprise self-cultivation and social training, and make efforts in many aspects, such as strengthening university training, carrying out large-scale vocational education and training, promoting preferential policies for IC talents, strengthening the introduction of overseas high-end talents and building an ecological system for innovation and entrepreneurship in IC-related fields.

　　Lian Yong, a professor at the National University of Singapore, pointed out that Japanese high schools will provide universal education for integrated circuits. He believes that in higher education, integrated circuit design courses and EDA design tools should be popularized, and MPW (Multi-Project Wafer) for university education should be set up to cultivate students’ practical ability.

　　Enterprises should also get rid of the original thinking. "Don’t want to be short and fast. In terms of cooperation with international enterprises, you should buy technology, pay patent fees, and invite experts to pay for it. "Li Wei, vice president of CCID Consulting, told reporters.

　　In terms of training local talents, Wei Xu pointed out that enterprises should help employees to learn and improve their comprehensive work-related abilities, so as to meet the needs of their posts, improve the performance of employees and the company, ensure the effective operation of the company’s production, quality information security management system, safety and environmental management system, and promote the realization of the company’s strategic development goals, business goals and information security goals.

　　"Don’t want to spend a lot of money to bring in talents at once. What’s the point of staying for a year and then running away?" Yu Xiekang said.