The evolution of the electronic and electrical architecture of the whole vehicle, centralization is the general trend.
Thanks to the significant increase in the demand for intelligence in the terminal market, the need for the automotive industry to reduce costs and increase efficiency, and the industry continues to make new breakthroughs in high-performance computing chips, the two core sectors of intelligent driving and intelligent cabin have basically achieved intra-domain integration in the past two years.
According to the configuration data of Gasgoo Automotive Research Institute, in 2023, the number of standard deliveries of cockpit domain control front equipment in the Chinese market will reach 34760,000 sets, and the loading rate increased to 165%；The number of deliveries of the pre-installed intelligent driving domain control was 18390,000 sets, and the loading rate has been increased to 87%。
At present, as mainstream car companies are scrambling to promote the research and development and implementation of the most centralized electronic and electrical architecture, the demand for cross-domain integration between various functional domains has been further improved.
The cabin and the driver are fused, and the battle begins
The so-called cockpit and driving integration, as the name suggests, is to highly integrate the cockpit domain and the intelligent driving domain into a high-performance computing unit to achieve a comprehensive connection of hardware, software and applications, so as to better support the deployment and update of new functions, improve the user experience, and shorten the development cycle and reduce the cost of the whole vehicle.
Gasgoo Cars.
Under the current domain centralized architecture, although the intelligent driving domain and the cockpit domain have achieved intra-domain integration, the two domains are still independent of each other, and the whole is two boxes and two boards. The cockpit and driver integration is committed to realizing one box, one board, and one chip, of which one chip is generally regarded as the "ultimate solution" for cockpit and driver integration, that is, running the intelligent driving domain and the intelligent cabin domain at the same time on one SoC chip.
However, due to the higher degree of system integration, the single-chip cockpit integration has higher requirements than the first two solutions in terms of software adaptation and hardware selection.
In the early days, due to factors such as chip performance, software technology level, and architecture solutions, multi-chip solutions were mainly used for cockpit and pilot integration.
For example, the "four-leaf clover" architecture of Leapmotor uses "Qualcomm SA8295 + NVIDIA Orin" in the high-configuration solution, which supports high-speed NOA, urban NOA and mainstream intelligent cockpit applications. ECARX's Super Brain realizes the integration of cabin and driving through "SiEngine Dragon Eagle No. 1 + Black Sesame Smart A1000". Desay SV's in-vehicle intelligent computing platform ICP Aurora is even equipped with three high-performance SoCs, namely NVIDIA Orin, Qualcomm SA8295 and Black Sesame Huashan A1000.
The real turning point of the single-chip cabin pilot integration began in the second half of 2022.
In September of this year, NVIDIA and Qualcomm successively launched Drive Thor, Snapdragon Ride Flex SoC for the most advanced computing architecture, with a computing power of up to 2000TOPS, making it possible to deploy the intelligent cabin domain and the intelligent driving domain on one chip at the same time, and the cockpit integration kicked off the prelude to the development of a single SoC. In the past, many OEMs and Tier1s have been actively developing single-chip cockpit and driver integration solutions.
Bosch.
For example, Bosch's new cross-domain computing platform, which was launched at CES 2024, uses Qualcomm's latest generation of Snapdragon Ride Flex SoC to support the simultaneous operation of many intelligent cockpit and intelligent driving functions on a single SoC, including automatic parking, lane detection, intelligent personalized navigation, voice assistance, and driver assistance functions. According to previously announced information, mass production of this chip is expected to begin in 2024.
In addition, Thunderda's subsidiaries Changxing Intelligent Driving, Meijia Technology, and Auto Link World also demonstrated domain controllers based on the Snapdragon Ride Flex SoC during CES 2024, promoting the rapid development of cabin and driver integration.
It can be seen that in this round of cabin-driver integration technology competition, Qualcomm's Snapdragon Ride Flex SoC has become the first choice of many Tier1s.
New car companies such as Li Auto, ZEEKR and Nezha Automobile have all confirmed that they will use NVIDIA's Drive Thor in new cars in the future, among which the first new ZEEKR car equipped with Drive Thor is scheduled to be launched in 2025.
Because the above car companies are currently using Nvidia's chips in terms of intelligent driving systems, based on this, the reusability of the products of the same chip factory may be better than the new chip solutions in some underlying developments. Qualcomm's previous SoC mainly focused on the cockpit, and it can be found that the Tier 1 that cooperated with it was basically its cockpit domain control customers in the past. Gasgoo Automotive Research Institute analysts said.
It is worth noting that in the past few years, Qualcomm and Nvidia have established a significant dominant position in the field of intelligent cockpit and autonomous driving respectively with their deep accumulation in the field of chips. Nowadays, with the increasingly prominent trend of cabin and driver integration, the two leading companies have quietly opened a new round of strategic competition and technology game.
Black Sesame Smart.
At the same time, Black Sesame Intelligence also joined the battle. On the eve of the 2023 Shanghai Auto Show, Black Sesame Intelligent announced the official launch of the cross-domain computing chip platform "Wudang" series, as well as the first chip C1200 of the series, providing a "Chinese solution" for the vehicle E architecture to move towards the advanced computing era.
According to Yang Yuxin, chief marketing officer of Black Sesame Intelligence, the cabin-driving integration and single-chip NOA solution based on the Wudang series C1200 is expected to be mass-produced from the end of 2024 to the beginning of 2025. At present, the C1200 has completed the complete test after tape-out, and the functional performance verification has been successful, and the sample can be provided to customers.
In addition, Aptiv, Visteon, Zongmu Technology and Heduo Technology have also said that they are promoting the research and development of cabin and driving integration, among which Aptiv's cross-domain convergence computing platform is reported to be built by Aptiv's China R&D team based on local system-level high-performance chips, covering three control domains: intelligent cockpit, intelligent assisted driving and automatic parking.
It is foreseeable that driven by the synergy effect of the vertical and deepening of the industrial chain, the integrated technology of cabin and driving is gradually approaching the "critical point" of landing application.
2024 will be a critical window period
As soon as this year, the cockpit and driver integration solution based on a single chip with high computing power is expected to become a reality.
In particular, with the development of cockpit and vehicle fusion chips, the rapid evolution of SOA architecture technology, and the continuous growth of OEM's demand for cost optimization, the continuous improvement of users' demand for intelligent functions, and the superposition of multiple factors, the mass production and application speed of single-chip cockpit integration is accelerating. The relevant person in charge of Desay SV said. In this context, it is expected that 2024 will become an important opportunity year for the integration of single-chip cabin drivers.
Qian Qian, vice president of the ** Research Institute of Hangsheng Technology Center, also believes that the future of cabin and driver integration has come, and more car companies are expected to gradually achieve mass production this year and next year.
The integration of cockpit and driver is an external pull formed by the improvement of users' demand for intelligence, and it is also the internal drive of car companies for cost optimization. Among them, new energy vehicles will be the first to begin to land as a core carrier, and with the continuous improvement of the penetration rate of new energy vehicles, as well as the replacement and upgrading of traditional fuel vehicles, the evolution process of cabin and driver integration will be accelerated. Talking about the core driving force of the current cabin and driver integration and development, Qian Qian said.
However, this process will not be achieved overnight, and many people in the industry believe that one-box, as a solution with low integration difficulty, is expected to be the first to be realized; The One Board, that is, integrates the intelligent driving chip and the cockpit chip on a core board to further improve the integration, but the SOC is still two, which can be regarded as another transition solution; Finally, the ONE chip realizes the integration of cabins and drivers in the true sense, but this solution strongly relies on the mass production breakthrough of high-performance SoC.
Gasgoo Cars.
It can also be seen that although the integration of cabin and driver has brought rich imagination space for the intelligent evolution of the whole vehicle, it is not easy to truly achieve the landing.
Cockpit integration is the product of the gradual innovation of electronic and electrical architecture, which belongs to the update of the architecture level, not just two circuit boards into one circuit board, or two chips into one chip. Qian Qian pointed out. As a result, there are bound to be a number of technical and performance challenges.
A practical problem is how to meet the differentiated needs of the intelligent driving domain and the cockpit domain on one chip in the process of cockpit integration. At present, due to the close coupling relationship between intelligent driving and driving safety, the requirements for safety, stability, reliability and response speed in the intelligent driving domain are significantly higher than those in the cockpit domain. In contrast, the cockpit domain focuses more on the optimization and upgrading of user interaction experience and in-vehicle entertainment system, so it has high requirements for the diversification and continuous iteration of system functions.
In this case, how to fully meet the different requirements of the two domains for security and real-time performance, how to isolate different functional safety levels, resource scheduling, cross-domain adaptation, reasonable power consumption and cost control, rapid test verification and engineering implementation in the process of convergence are all unavoidable topics.
Even if one board or even one chip is realized, in view of the current industry standards in the definition and division of relevant functions, as well as the high cost of high-performance SoC chips, it is determined that there is still a long way to go for cabin and driver integration to be truly popularized on a large scale.
Not only that, for cockpit integration, even the entire industry will face new requirements such as organizational reconstruction, personnel capacity training, process design, and technology iteration. The above-mentioned person in charge of Desay SV pointed out.
In the current organizational structure, the R&D functions of intelligent driving and intelligent cockpit of many OEMs and Tier1 are usually divided into two independent business units. In order to effectively promote the process of cabin and driver integration, it is necessary to strengthen cross-departmental collaboration, and even break down the original departmental barriers to achieve deep integration at the organizational structure level. This process not only places high demands on the internal coordination mechanism of the enterprise, but also is a very challenging strategic organizational restructuring task, which is inherently difficult.
This is only within the enterprise, from the perspective of the entire industry, the integrated development of cabin and driving will even bring about the reshaping of the industrial chain pattern, including the new division of labor and cooperation between upstream and downstream enterprises, as well as the reconstruction of the existing development system and model, this change has begun to emerge in the evolution of the vehicle E E architecture from the traditional distributed to the domain centralized architecture.
At present, the new type of OEM cooperation has changed from the vertical model in the past to the current network model, that is, with OEM as the center, the electronic system Tier1, the software system Tier1, the semiconductor supplier Tier2 and the ICT enterprises cooperate with each other. Talking about the impact of cabin and driver integration on the industrial chain cooperation model, Hu Xiaoli, deputy general manager of Jiefa Technology, once said.
Next, with the deeper integration of the intelligent driving domain and the intelligent cabin domain, and further evolution towards the first-class computing architecture, it will further promote the reshaping of the industrial chain pattern.
Especially this year, the first battle in the auto market is still continuing, and under the multiple pressures of reducing costs and increasing efficiency and in-depth intelligent and electrified transformation, a more fierce competition reshuffle and deep integration are quietly coming.