In the wave of electrification and intelligence in the global automotive industry, the automotive-grade chip industry is ushering in unprecedented development opportunities. However, in the near futureThe U.S.** plans to investigate Chinese-made electric vehiclesThis trend has undoubtedly brought new challenges to the development of China's automotive-grade chip industry.
This article will dive in**The current situation and innovation strength of China's automotive-grade chip industryto provide forward-looking analysis and thinking for both the industry and beyond.
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Original author: Animism.
In recent years, the sales of smart electric vehicles have been rising rapidly, and the in-depth development of intelligence has led to the continuous growth of single-vehicle chips, and the demand for vehicle-grade chips in the field of smart electric vehicles has become more and more vigorous. Under such strong demand, the development of China's automotive-grade chips has not been smooth sailing.
Since 2021, the automotive industry has faced an overall core shortage, and in this special period, domestic automotive-grade chips have accelerated their entry into the car and completed the substitution of foreign products, making gratifying progress. But due to automotive-grade chipsDifficult production, long productization cycle, rapid demand growth, imbalance between supply and demand, insufficient production capacity of upstream enterprises, the impact of the epidemic, and serious hoarding of goods by car companiesand other reasons, China's vehicle-grade chips are still the sameThere are many "internal worries".
At the same time, the level of autonomy rate of China's vehicle-grade chips is still very low, especially the high-end process is far less than that of overseas manufacturers, and China's core technology research and development and resources are lagging behind developed countriesSurrounded by "external threats".The dilemma.
With such an urgent situation of internal and external troubles, China's automotive-grade chips urgently need to find their own way of innovation.
Chip technology innovation
In terms of chip technology innovation, domestic automotive-grade chips focus on three dimensions: material innovation, design innovation and manufacturing process innovation.
Material innovation
High pressure, high frequency, high temperaturesicand fast transmission and high integrationSilicon photonics signal chipsIt has become two important positions for material innovation.
Although the development of SIC in China has lagged behind, it has achieved remarkable results. For example, domestic manufacturers have vigorously deployed SiC power devices through continuous iteration of IGBT technology, taking the lead in realizing the mass production of SiC power modules, and further customizing power modules for SiC to give full play to the significant advantages of SiC materials after entering the stage of replacing Si-IGBT with SiC-MOSFET.
Silicon photonics chips are the crystallization of the integration of photonic technology and microelectronics technology, which not only has high bandwidth, high speed and high anti-interference performance of light, but also has the advantages of high integration of microelectronics, low energy consumption and low cost. At present, several companies in China have developed FMCW lidar solutions based on silicon photonics chips.
Design innovation
Automotive-grade chip design to:Performance & Safetyas the core goal and driving force.
InImprove the computing performance of the chipIn terms of chips, most chip manufacturers adopt multi-core integration to improve the overall computing efficiency of chips by integrating multiple high-frequency cores. 100MHz is no longer surprising, and there are chips whose main frequency has been as high as 800MHz, and high-frequency and high-performance chips have become the mainstream of design.
There are also some industry pioneers who have opened up new technical routes and entered the market"Integration of storage and computing".Architecture. Compared with traditional architecture chips, the integrated storage and computing architecture chip has the advantages of low power consumption, low latency, and high computing power, which can perfectly meet the needs of intelligent driving scenarios.
Comparison of storage and computing integration, GPU, and CPU architecture, ** Yiou think tank.
InInformation securityAt present, many domestic enterprises have deployed vehicle-grade chips with many years of security chip technology. Functional safety aspects, multi-core MCU passesDual-core lockstepThe design improves the level of functional safety, and the SoC with a lower safety level improves the overall functional safety level by forming a safety island through plug-in or built-in high-safety MCUs.
Process innovation
Different computing and control chips have different requirements for manufacturing processes, but in order to reduce costs and increase efficiency, domestic chips continue to pursue advanced processes and explore the limits of Moore's Law.
Compared with the continuous pursuit of advanced processes (below 28nm), the demand for MCUs in terms of process technology is relatively low. Most of China's automotive-grade MCUs use a mature 40nm processOnly a few companies such as SemiDrive Technology have adopted more advanced process technology. In contrast, overseas chip manufacturers have already entered the field of advanced processes. Although there is a large gap between China and overseas in this regard, we still have some buffer space considering the low demand for MCUs for the manufacturing process.
With the development of intelligent vehicles, the computing power and performance requirements of AI chips for intelligent vehicles continue to increase, prompting SoCs required for scenarios such as intelligent cockpits and autonomous driving to continue to pursue advanced manufacturing processes to achieve breakthroughs in computing performance and cost. In terms of SoC chips, there is also a certain gap between China and overseas chips. However, there is something to be proud ofLocal SoC chips have been developed to 7nm, Horizon, Black Sesame Intelligence, Xinqing Technology and other companies have released related products. However, overseas chip manufacturers such as Nvidia Altan have taken the lead in entering the more advanced 5nm process stage.
SoC competes for advanced manufacturing process, data**: Yiou think tank.
This shows that we still need to work the road of technological catch-up, but it also shows the vigorous development of China's chip industry.
Driven by end products, automotive-grade chips are fromCross-domain convergence to the Zonal architecture is distributed in three layers with the centralized evolution of EEA. For example, some domestic enterprises have made bold attempts to use the Zonal architecture as the guide and framework for the definition of chip products, and take perception, computing, and communication as the base points to comprehensively deploy automotive intelligent chips.
Ouyeel Semiconductor believes that in the next 5-10 years, the automotive electronic and electrical architecture will be designed based on the Zonal architecture, and all automotive chips will fall into the three intervals of intelligent end-side chips, regional processors and first-class computing platforms under the Zonal architecture. **The computing chip will first move towards the integration of driving and parking, and then towards the integration of cabin and driving, and the final form will be a full-service and full-scenario processor.
In addition,"Software-defined vehicles".It is also accelerating the landing, and domestic chip companies are gradually forming"Chip + Algorithm + Tool Chain".The product solution further improves the computing efficiency of the chip with the high adaptation between the software algorithm and the chip. At the same time, the demand for adaptation with upper-level software has pushed some chip companies to go further and begin to lay out basic software layers such as operating systems and middleware to further broadenHardware and software synergy boundaries
According to the research and analysis of Yiou think tank, the first computing chip will become the core research and development task of the chip factory, and the chip factory will cooperate deeply with software algorithm vendors, and is committed to launching a first-class computing solution based on large computing power and high software and hardware collaboration, so as to make technical reserves for the future One Brain cloud computing architecture.
Driven by the international situation and policy guidance, domestic substitution of low-end scenarios in the field of automotive-grade chips has become a general trend, and with the progress and maturity of technology, Chinese chips are gradually developing towards the application of cockpit domain control and intelligent driving domain control scenarios. At the same time, enterprises have looked up to automotive electronics application scenarios with higher safety requirementsStrive to develop high-end chips for BMS, power, and safety fields
In order to achieve more transparent, flexible and in-depth cooperation and collaborationThe cooperation model between chip factories and OEMs has gradually shifted from the black box model to IP licensingChip factories are increasingly focusing on core IP R&D and reference design, and OEMs can also put forward more diverse and customized requirements for chips, laying a solid hardware foundation for the innovation and iteration of smart cars.
The change of the chain of automotive-grade chips, the first billion euro think tank.
The barriers of the traditional automotive-grade chip chain are also gradually being broken, and the regional flatter mesh structure is also being broken. OEMs and chip factories are becoming more and more connected, and chip factories can simultaneously reach OEMs and Tier1s, so as to broaden cooperation channels and build a more complex ecological network.
The "heart" of smart cars, automotive-grade chips, is leading the transformation of the automotive industry. In this change, China's on-board chip industry is showing strong vitality and development potential. With the continuous breakthrough of technology and the continuous expansion of the market, we have reason to believe that China's automotive-grade chips will become an important force in the global smart car industry in the near future.
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The copyright belongs to the author.
Original author: Animism.
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