As China becomes the most important industrial base in the world, related upstream industries are gradually moving to China, and PCB industry is one of them. At the same time, with the vigorous development of new energy vehicles, 5G and other new technologies, PCB has also put forward higher requirements, as an important electronic component, its role is increasingly prominent at present.

Since 2006, China has surpassed Japan to become the world’s largest PCB production base, and its output value accounted for 53.8% of the world in 2020. PCB will be replaced by chip in the future, where will PCB market go?
The market development of new energy vehicles and 5G drives PCB demand.

According to insiders, from the current terminal market and supply chain feedback, the current demand for PCB is actually rising, including 5G, smart home, new energy vehicles. Take new energy vehicles for example, the demand for PCB will be 4-5 times that of traditional vehicles, and the overall market demand is strong.

Current because of the price hike in chip shortage duration is longer, many electronic companies in China through the localization of or replace the chip solutions to deal with, a lot of products need revision PCB design, some PCB factory also promoted many enterprises through free proofing and PCB proofing the enthusiasm of teachers and students at colleges and universities, but for PCB manufacturing market has brought a certain degree of growth.

New energy vehicles demand for PCB, new energy vehicles also carry the autopilot, radar, intelligent cabin, such as technology, compared with the traditional cars a lot more complex on the design of the PCB, and want to realize these functions, rich PCB carry the signal rate requirement will be higher, and may appear on the smart cockpit HDI board needs. At the same time, new energy vehicles usually carry many camera modules, which requires more combination of soft and hard plates.

What makes a good PCB

PCB industry has been developing for so long, and now there are some new changes in PCB design. One is more miniaturization, mainly driven by the need for smart device portability; The other is the shift of PCBS from traditional hard boards to combination boards. In addition, there will be two main aspects when PCB moves to high-end. One is the increasingly high data bearing and transmission rate, and the other is the increasingly obvious demand for HDI for smart home and wearable devices. In terms of industry standards, a good PCB must first meet the performance requirements of the user, and also meet the standards in terms of reliability, preferably with a cost advantage. Of course, for different products, the emphasis on the above three points will be different.

Will chips replace PCBs?

Lin chaowen said that although the chip is becoming more and more integrated, it is impossible to replace PCB in the short term, and PCB is still needed to achieve the basic support. For example, the SoC of mobile phone integrates a series of modules including CPU, GPU, DDR, etc., which can be regarded as the complete integration of modules previously only realized on a PCB board. In some ways, the production of the motherboard is more difficult. At the same time, some PCB external interface is difficult to do in the chip, how to access USB has become a problem. And in some high reliability products, the application is less. You need to consider the cost of the product and the corresponding requirements. Therefore, the demand for traditional PCB will continue to increase for a long time in the future.

Conclusion (China’s PCB industry)

From the perspective of the market in recent years, China’s PCB industry is still developing rapidly, and with the emergence of 5G, new energy vehicles, new display technology and other applications, PCB has posed new challenges. At the same time, the maturity of the industry also gives birth to the needs of third-party PCB designers. Through docking with original manufacturers and PCB manufacturers, a cost-effective mass production scheme is finally formed. As for whether chips will replace PCBS in the future, at least not in the short term, demand is still growing. But in the long run, a lot of innovation comes from making bold assumptions.