Recently, Lars Reger, chief technology officer of NXP, said that artificial intelligence alone is not enough to ensure further innovation in automotive chips, because manufacturing cars is not like making artificial intelligence chatbots.
According to Reger, the adoption of more creative electronic features in the automotive industry will be relatively slow and gradual, rather than disruptive. The high safety standards of automobiles mean that AI chips will not suddenly replace all other automotive chips, such as sensors, processors, and microcontrollers. Instead, they will be gradually integrated to enhance existing functionality. "A lot of people think that AI and machine learning are everything. They're great technologies, but they don't do the job of 'supporting smart cars' on their own. He said.
Comparing chips in cars to the central nervous system, Reger said that a reliable automotive system requires many other chips to act as "cerebellum" and "brainstem," not just "brain." He added: "We often focus on what is the right level of AI and how to minimize power consumption. It's not like building ChatGPT, which requires huge energy consumption and cloud-based biointelligence. ”
The automotive industry is also different from consumer electronics such as PCs, and safety standards are very high, which is why it has been relatively slow to adopt all the creative features promised by AI, Reger continued.
Talking about the security and resiliency of the chain, Reger said that after the unprecedented chip shortage two years ago, NXP and its customers have become very concerned about the resilience of the chain and want their major contract chipmakers, such as TSMC, to provide multiple production locations instead of centralizing production in one place. It is unrealistic to ask TSMC to produce its most advanced chips in Europe, where demand is mainly automotive and industrial chips, which can be manufactured using less advanced technologies.
"In the next 10 years, 2nm chips will be mainly used in mobile phones or PCs," Reger said. But there aren't any big mobile phone or PC manufacturers in Europe, so if you're going to build a 2nm factory in Europe, you need to attract customers from Asia and the United States, which doesn't make sense. The current idea about resilience is to build some redundancy in the chain, as customers can tolerate the slightly higher ** that comes with this.
In addition, while major economies are pushing local semiconductor production, globalization continues to drive the chip industry forward, Reger said. The chip industry needs to serve the global market, so globalization is key. Otherwise, it will only slow down innovation because you're not creating enough R&D funding to accelerate technology development.
Proofreading by Zhang Jie).