Kunpeng Project
Produced by |Visitor travel.
Author |Liao Hongjie.
Edit |Feng Yu.
American Editor |Qianqian.
Audit |Ode.
Recently, Huawei's lack of production capacity for intelligent driving chips has led to poor delivery of new vehicles, which has attracted the attention of the market.
The focus of attention is almost always on the shortage of a component in Huawei's MDC 810 computing unit (similar to NVIDIA's Orin intelligent driving chip). The main affected models are the Zhijie S7, AVATR 12 and Wenjie M9.
When everyone was worried about Huawei's smart driving capacity, Nvidia announced that it had won several key Chinese automotive customers at the International Consumer Electronics Show, and claimed: "Li Auto will use the Thor automotive chip platform in its next-generation models." In addition, three manufacturers, including Great Wall Motor, ZEEKR and Xiaomi, have adopted Orin chips to make a new generation of intelligent driving systems. ”
Subsequently, Nvidia founder Jensen Huang visited China again after several years, visited offices in Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen and other cities, and participated in the annual meeting of NVIDIA in China.
Figure Network).
Obviously, Nvidia is ready to enter the field of intelligent driving in China's cars in a big way.
As the first echelon of brand manufacturers and solution providers in the field of intelligent driving in China, they also do not show weakness. On January 30, Xpeng Motors officially announced that Xpeng XNGP (All-Scene Intelligent Assisted Driving) has covered 243 cities across the country, becoming the brand with the largest number of intelligent driving cities. On February 2, the AITO Wenjie series ushered in a blockbuster upgrade, Huawei's ADS20 (high-end intelligent assisted driving) directly covers all cities in the country.
Today, with the gradual maturity of the new energy vehicle industry chain, it is difficult to decide the winner in electrification, and the unique intelligence and automation seem to better reflect the technology accumulation and product investment of car companies.
Looking at the current intelligent field of electric vehicles, intelligent driving chips and vehicle machine chips seem to have become a hurdle that brand car companies cannot avoid. In the face of the "rulers" in the field of chips, Qualcomm and Nvidia, China's intelligent driving companies are also looking for new alternatives.
In 1999, NVIDIA pioneered the concept of GPU, redefined the graphics technology of computers, and became an unavoidable chip company in the fields of online games, data computing, image processing, and intelligent driving, and also achieved a semiconductor giant comparable to Intel and Qualcomm.
In July 2020, Nvidia surpassed Intel in market value for the first time and became the chip manufacturer with the highest market value in the United States. In May 2023, NVIDIA's market capitalization exceeded $1 trillion, successfully joining the "trillion club" of companies with a market value of US dollars.
Figure: Nvidia WeChat***
The rise of NVIDIA, in addition to catering to the explosive demand for chip computing power in artificial intelligence, also has a scenario demand that cannot be ignored - intelligent driving or autonomous driving.
In January 2018, NVIDIA launched the first X**ier chip based on autonomous driving data processing. In 2019, the Orin chip, which has the largest computing power (254 tops) to date, was released, which became one of the few quantifiable advantages of many new car-making forces to demonstrate autonomous driving (intelligent assisted driving), and won almost all orders in the initial market of intelligent driving in one fell swoop.
Exploring Passenger Travel sorted out the smart electric vehicles that have received a high degree of attention recently, and found that almost all brand models with relatively high levels of intelligence (mainly including cockpit, intelligent driving, chassis, etc.), such as Xiaopeng, Weilai, Ideal, etc., are equipped with Qualcomm's 8155 cockpit chip. In the field of intelligent driving alone, relatively good reputations such as Xiaopeng, Jiyue, and Denza are almost all equipped with NVIDIA's Orin X intelligent driving chip.
In a market where the cockpit and intelligent driving are monopolized by Qualcomm and Nvidia respectively, there is a special group empowered by Huawei's car BU. For example, most of the brand models such as Wenjie, Zhijie, AVATR and Jihu use a combination of Kirin 990A cockpit chip and Huawei MDC810 MDC610 computing platform.
Of course, there are also some domestic automotive-grade chip solutions such as Horizon and Black Sesame Intelligence, which have begun to test their knives on some models.
For example, the Lynk & Co 08 model is equipped with the Longying No. 1 cockpit chip of Xinqing Technology and the Huashan A1000 intelligent driving chip solution of Black Sesame Intelligence, the Leapmotor C11 is equipped with the Lingxin 01 intelligent driving chip developed by Leapmotor, and the ideal L9 model is equipped with the Horizon Journey 5 intelligent driving chip.
Figure: Nvidia WeChat***
From the prospectus of Black Sesame Intelligence, it is known that in 2022, the global shipment of high-computing SOs (computing power over 50TOPS) will be about 380,000 pieces, of which the Chinese market will contribute 350,000 pieces, accounting for 92% of the global high-computing power SoC shipments11%。At the same time, among the 380,000 global high-computing power SoC shipments, Nvidia alone contributed 31350,000 pieces, with a market share of 8250%。
For the market budget of high-computing power SoC, Black Sesame Intelligence also made an estimate: "In 2023, the global shipment of high-computing power SoC will reach 1.2 million pieces, and the shipment volume of the Chinese market will reach 1.05 million pieces." ”
If you look at the market share in China, 8750% compared to 92 in 2022Although 11% is a significant decline, it is still the world's largest market.
Perhaps this also explains why Nvidia's Jensen Huang chose to visit China on the occasion of the company's annual meeting, after all, China is an unavoidable market for Nvidia. This is a triumphant "celebration banquet", and it is also a "magnificent wine" for an expedition.
The demand of the Chinese market will determine the market trend of the global high-computing power SoC, and NVIDIA's high-computing power SoC** is influencing the trend of the Chinese market.
But thankfully, in 2022's shipments of 380,000 high-computing power SoCs, Horizon started with 2With a shipment of 360,000 pieces, it has become the world's second largest supplier of high-computing power SoCs after NVIDIA, with a market share of about 620%。Black Sesame Intelligence is based on 1Shipments of 820,000 pieces followed, with a market share of about 480%。
Nvidia, Horizon and Black Sesame Intelligence together support the global 93In the 5% high-computing power SoC market, two Chinese companies followed closely behind NVIDIA to become the three leading companies in the world's high-computing power SoC shipments.
Under the absolute advantage of NVIDIA, China's high-computing SOC represented by Horizon and Black Sesame Intelligence still occupies a place. Although it is not much, at least it has given domestic brands a glimmer of hope in this high-computing SOC market.
And outside of Horizon and Black Sesame Intelligence, stronger challengers have emerged.
In April 2021, Huawei officially released the MDC810 intelligent computing platform, with a maximum computing power of 400+ TOPS, which can meet the application scenarios of high-level autonomous driving passenger cars and RoboTaxi, and refreshes the intelligent driving computing platform with the highest computing power that has been mass-produced.
Figure Network).
In December of the same year, at the Huawei Intelligent Vehicle Solution Ecosystem Forum, Xu Wei, Director of the Intelligent Driving Technology Department of GAC Research Institute, said: "GAC will release a number of strategic models based on Huawei's MDC in the next three years. He also said that in 2022, it will launch the GAC Aion LX based on Huawei's MDC 610 computing platform and L2+ intelligent driving functions. In 2024, GAC Aion will launch a new L4 architecture based on Huawei's MDC 810 computing platform.
However, in March 2023, GAC Group announced that due to the allocation of resources from all parties, the AH8 project of its holding company GAC Aion will be changed from joint development with Huawei to independent development, and Huawei will participate in the development and cooperation of the project as a leading businessman.
The reason for the breakdown of the cooperation with GAC is unknown, but at the China Electric Vehicle 100 Forum a month later, Yu Chengdong's speech on cooperation with car companies is really intriguing, "International giants will not choose because of sanctions, and traditional car companies will not choose if they are afraid of losing their souls." ”
Fortunately, Huawei's MDC 810 computing unit has a maximum computing power of 400 TOPS, which is significantly higher than NVIDIA's Orin X chip in terms of maximum computing power. This is also the key to Huawei's insistence on entering the automotive industry after the terminal business was blocked.
In the same field of high-computing power SoC, the domestic semiconductor company Houmo Intelligent has not only made a major breakthrough in high-computing power intelligent driving chips, but also innovatively launched the underlying design scheme of "storage and computing integration", exploring a new possibility in the technical route of semiconductor chips.
Explorer Travel learned from Houmo Intelligence that in May 2023, Houmo Intelligence launched a smart driving chip based on "storage and computing integration" - Houmo Hongtu H30, which not only surpassed NVIDIA Orin in terms of computing power of up to 256 TOPS, but also broke through the bottleneck of chip computing power and power consumption, realized the step of chip energy efficiency ratio, and brought new possibilities to the smart car industry.
The H30 innovatively integrates the storage unit and the computing unit to achieve partial or full computing in the storage unit. While greatly improving the interaction efficiency and computing utilization rate of data and computing, it also avoids the repeated jumping of data between the storage unit and the computing unit, and greatly reduces the delay problem of data processing. This effectively improves the energy efficiency ratio of the chip and breaks the dilemma of high computing power and low power consumption.
Figure: Houmo Smart WeChat***
In order to support customers' rapid development, model adaptation and product introduction, Houmo Intelligent also provides a set of full-featured Liyu (developed based on Houmo Hongtu H30 chip) domain controller hardware and software algorithm reference design and Houmo Dadao software platform to build energy-efficient solutions with high computing power and escort customers' continuous upgrading in the field of intelligent driving.
As for the landing use of this Houmo Hongtu H30 chip, Houmo Intelligent told Tanke Travel, "It has been sent to the OEM customers for testing and received good test feedback, and the specific cooperative car companies and models will be announced at a later time." ”
In addition, Black Sesame Intelligence's Huashan No. 2 A1000 Pro intelligent driving chip can also achieve the highest computing power of 106+TOPS; Horizon's third-generation automotive-grade product, Journey 5, already has a computing power of up to 128 tops, which together supports the intelligent driving market from electrification to intelligent upgrading.
A person close to Horizon told Tanke Travel : "Horizon's next-generation product Journey 6 will have a qualitative leap, and the new product will be officially launched in the first half of 2024, which has been booked in advance by a number of domestic new energy vehicle companies." ”
For the high-computing chip market, the global market looks at China, and the Chinese market looks at NVIDIA, which is the current status quo.
For the new energy vehicle market, the global market looks at China, and China already has the world's largest number of new energy vehicle brands, as well as the most comprehensive product solutions and technical route accumulation.
For the intelligent driving of new energy vehicles, the high-computing power chip is only to further exert the intelligent driving technology, and the software system seems to be indispensable for intelligent driving.
Figure Network).
Huawei's "HarmonyOS + ADS2.""0" has become a recognized "perfect match" in the field of intelligent vehicles, Xpeng's XNGP, Apollo, and Tesla's SFD and other solutions together form the first echelon of intelligent driving of new energy vehicles, and have achieved outstanding results in their respective fields.
However, in order to give full play to the advantages of the software level, it must be supported by the hardware of the computing power chip. After all, even if there are many intelligent driving solutions among car companies, they are still under the absolute monopoly of NVIDIA in the field of chip hardware.
However, with the acceleration of independent technical solutions and routes such as Huawei's MDC computing platform, Horizon's Journey series, Black Sesame Intelligence's Huashan series, and the Houmo Hongtu chip and Liyu domain controller, which are expected to rewrite the chip design rules, it seems that the domestic intelligent automobile industry has a stronger confidence to be "not controlled by others".
The title picture in the article comes from: Camera.com, based on the VRF protocol.