With the blessing of intelligence and networking, the car has evolved into a mobile intelligent terminal. The share of semiconductors in automobiles is rising rapidly. According to gartner data, the global automotive semiconductor market is expected to reach $65.1 billion in 2022, accounting for 12% of the global semiconductor market and becoming the fastest growing segment in the semiconductor segment. With the guidance and support of national policies for the local semiconductor industry, automotive semiconductor companies have ushered in the opportunity of rapid development.
Core Engine Technology has seized the opportunity and has recently made a successful breakthrough in chip development. On December 10, 2021, Core Engine Technology officially released the intelligent cockpit chips of the automotive chip brands "Dragon Eagle" and "Dragon Eagle One" in Wuhan. At the press conference, Core Engine Technology revealed that the "Dragon Eagle One" will be mass-produced and tested in 2022.
The release of "Dragon Eagle One" has attracted great attention from the industry. On the one hand, it is the only 7-nanometer chip produced by TSMC in China, and it is also one of the very few high-end intelligent cockpit chips on the market that uses a 7-nanometer process. On the other hand, the core engine technology behind "Dragon Eagle One" was established in 2018 and successfully developed a high-performance vehicle specification-level chip in just 3 years, and the strength behind the company is eye-catching.
"Dragon Eagle One" a new generation of 7nm vehicle specification-level intelligent cockpit chip
"In the era of vehicle electrification and intelligence, high-performance computing chips are the cornerstone of all experiences." Shen Ziyu, chairman of Core Qing Technology, emphasized when talking about China's automotive intelligent industry. The "Dragon Eagle One" intelligent cockpit chip released this time integrates "one core, multiple screens and multiple systems" for the smart cockpit, integrating speech recognition, gesture control, LCD instrumentation, HUD, DMS and ADAS integration and other functions, so that drivers can enjoy a more intuitive and personalized interactive experience.
The core engine technology chose to use the most advanced 7-nanometer process directly, "the fundamental reason is the market demand for intelligent cockpit computing power in automobiles." Dr. Wang Kai, director and CEO of Core Qing Technology, pointed out, "The 'Dragon Eagle One' 7-nanometer vehicle-level intelligent cockpit chip released this time has 8 CPU cores, 14 core GPUs, and 8 TOPS int8 programmable convolutional neural network engines, which mean that this chip can provide surging computing power at full speed." ”
In terms of the especially important security and reliability of automotive chips, Dr. Wang Kai introduced, "The chip reaches the AEC-Q100 Grade 3 level, adopts a security island design that conforms to asIL-D standards, builds an independent Security Island information security island, provides a high-performance encryption and decryption engine, supports SM2, SM3, SM4 and other national secret algorithms, supports secure boot, safe debugging and secure OTA updates, etc." Powerful CPU, GPU, VPU, ISP, DPU, NPU, DSP heterogeneous computing engine, as well as matching high-bandwidth, low-latency LPDDR5 memory channels and high-speed large-capacity external storage, provide a full range of computing power support for chip applications, and the verified and measured performance catches up with similar international products. ”
The industry knows that it is actually more difficult to do chips, especially high-end chips. From the determination of the self-developed chip to the successful release of the 26 months, Dr. Wang Kai admitted to Jiwei Network that the team of Core Engine Technology has experienced many problems in the chip design process.
The first aspect, the first is the entire design architecture of the chip. "If you want to make an architectural chip, you need to have a very thorough understanding of the application and function." Wang Kai pointed out, "The first difficulty is that you need to know what the customer or the depot wants. So we spent a lot of time on this piece, we and Geely, Yijiatong, and other car manufacturers did a very careful benchmarking, of course, we also referred to what the best chips in the industry are, what are their pain points, on this basis we have made a lot of comparisons. ”
"In addition, how to make the chip in the end, when it is really made, it can play a role, and in the cost angle, in the performance angle to meet the requirements, this is a good chip." So we put a lot of effort into it and did it very carefully in the early stages. Wang Kai then added, "After making it now, it proves that our vision at that time, our needs and the car factory are very matched, and in terms of function, we try to solve the problems that cannot be solved on other chips, such as the entire control of the dashboard, the application of virtual machines, these are the processes we are doing, and we spend a lot of time doing this thing at the technical level." ”
According to Shen Ziyu, the Dragon Eagle No. 1 chip tapelet was successful at one time, and all the lighting and paving at one time were paved. This is closely related to the R&D team of Core Engine Technology. "There are 8 PhDs in the semiconductor R&D team of more than 300 people, and the most important thing is that their experience in successful tape-out has added up to more than 200 times, in addition, the team also has high-end server chips, automotive chip development and mass production experience." Shen Ziyu said.
After the chip was successfully lit, Wang Kai said that the next focus of the work is to invest 20% of the R & D personnel in the chip mass production test, including chip aging, high and low temperature testing and yield improvement. Other personnel will develop the next generation of "Dragon Eagle" series of products, "Dragon Eagle II" is expected to be launched in 2024, "Dragon Eagle III" in 2026, and gradually create a stronger car chip.
For future plans, Core Engine Technology will join hands with Tier1 manufacturers such as Yijiatong Technology to promote the designated model projects of car companies and ecological partners, and it is expected to complete the integration and testing of the car as soon as 2022. In the future, we will continue to expand cooperation with more automobile brands and ecological partners at home and abroad. (Proofreading | new)