Jiwei network news, chips are the "new star" in the automotive industry chain. The importance is self-evident, due to the shortage of chips, global automakers have reduced production and stopped production; the value has also been rising, and new technologies such as automobile electrification, Internet of Vehicles, and autonomous driving have continued to land and penetrate, and it is expected that the proportion of automotive electronics in vehicle costs will increase to 45% in 2030, which means that the demand for chips will surge.
Chips are driving automotive electronics innovation with inevitable risks. Increasingly complex electronic systems are used in automobiles, and when defects fail any function, they may cause unpredictable threats, not only bringing crises to personal safety, but also making companies bear expensive compensation in the wake of subsequent recalls. Recently, the GM Bolt EV model may have a fire and recall due to the rare manufacturing defects of the LG chemical batteries used, and the losses of both sides are huge, while the "fake chip" flows into the automotive market and intensifies, which points out that it will become more and more important to reduce and prevent defects in automotive electronic components and achieve zero defects.
Exensio, a yield management system launched by Pudi Fei, can manage data throughout the supply chain, diagnose and analyze data, carry out quality control, and predictive analysis to prevent problems and help achieve zero defects throughout the entire life cycle of the chip. Pudifei has been working vertically in the semiconductor industry chain for 30 years, and is a semiconductor big data analysis company that has opened up the entire semiconductor industry chain and achieved end-to-end full coverage of the industrial chain.
So, can Pudifei's experience and advantages in the semiconductor industry chain be inherited and transplanted to the field of automotive electronics? What can Exensio software help and support the automotive industry? For recalls due to automotive electronics, does Pdi-Fly have some solutions in place to achieve full traceability of the supply chain and devices? How can Pudi Fei's own software platform be iteratively upgraded to meet the ever-changing needs of technology? For these issues, Jiwei Network recently interviewed Yu Guanyuan, vice president of Pudifei Semiconductor.
The advantages continue to automotive electronics, how to help achieve zero defects in automotive chips?
Reliability and quality are the basic and eternal pursuits of the automotive industry.
For consumer-grade chips, consumers still have a certain tolerance for defects. However, car chips are related to driving safety and require zero failure efficiency. Especially in the era of intelligent electric vehicles, the requirements for reliability and safety such as battery systems, ADAS and automatic driving are more stringent. Therefore, enterprises in the automotive chip supply chain must first pass various quality certifications, such as AEC-Q100, ISO 26262, etc.
Before a chip enters the automotive supply chain, it needs to go through a series of processes such as IC design, wafer fabrication, to packaging and testing. The Exensio platform condenses Pudifei's 30 years of experience and accumulation in the semiconductor industry, and has a choice of product modules for each link, including Fault Detection and Classification modules for semiconductor production (Exensio-Process Control), product test optimization modules (Exensio-Test Operations), The Semiconductor Yield Management System Module (Exensio-Manufacturing Analytics) and the Package Optimization Module (Exensio-Assembly Operations), etc., these modules can collect data on various states and processes of the corresponding machine equipment in each link and control it.
On the basis of governance, the Exensio platform also has data analysis functions, including yield analysis, and modeling and analysis of life. The semiconductor yield management system module can provide a variety of customized analysis, for automotive electronics, Pdi Fei specializes in customizing a variety of data screening templates, such as part average testing (PAT), statistical yield analysis (Statistical Bin Yield Analysis), by zone analysis (By zone analysis) and so on.
Yu Guanyuan said: "Taking PAT as an example, when the consumer chip is tested, if one die test on a wafer fails, and the other die test passes, these qualified die can still be used." But the car chip is very different, if there is a die test failed, the surrounding die will become a waste piece, because although these dies pass the test, but can not avoid the safety and reliability problems in the future. ”
In the field of automotive chips, most automotive system suppliers have added more stringent requirements in addition to vehicle regulation standards, and Pudifei has in-depth cooperation with these companies and has accumulated a lot of experience. Start-up automotive chip companies are often limited in scale and strength, and the acceptance criteria for automotive chips will not be lowered, but often more stringent because of the market threshold. Pouty's new Exensio Test Analytics Lite is a product designed to meet these needs, providing near real-time, fully automated defect screening from test to packaging while meeting the necessary data analysis capabilities. This is of great benefit to start-up automotive chip companies, through Pudifei's 30 years of industry experience in the semiconductor field, it can stand on the shoulders of predecessors and quickly improve the yield, stability, reliability and consistency of automotive chip delivery.
More than data traceability, on-site monitoring of the operation of car chips is possible?
After the automotive chip entered the market, the PudiFei Exensio platform is still playing an important role. Yu Guanyuan pointed out: "Pudifei not only cooperates with the semiconductor industry chain, but also has in-depth cooperation with users in the semiconductor industry, including automotive system suppliers and vehicle companies. At present, Pudifei's Exensio big data platform has a layout throughout the supply chain. ”
Similar to the recalls of GM due to battery risk mentioned above, the automotive industry has occurred from time to time over the years. Nowadays, automakers have stricter controls on safety and anti-counterfeiting, and have higher requirements for full traceability across multiple supply chains and manufacturers, and only more accurate and fast traceability and quality control can quickly locate the root cause of problems, solve problems and reduce losses.
Yu Guanyuan gave the example of Tesla, which requires every chip provided by its chip supplier to be traceable — from the application back end all the way to the front end, including the system module, packaging, testing, where production is done, as well as the responsible employees, the materials used, and so on.
Traceability of data ensures that every step must be traceable. Yu Guanyuan said that in the entire supply chain of semiconductors, compared with fab machines, some of the machines in the package are not so advanced and do not have full traceability functions, which will affect the entire traceability process. By exchanging data with various devices on the line, Assembly Operations can realize the five functions of defect classification distribution, unit traceability, process data collection, equipment performance tracking and program management and control. At the same time, the latter three functions can also ensure the comprehensiveness and real-time of the information, combined with other test results in Exensio, engineers can conduct comprehensive traceability and FDC analysis through the device ID at all levels, and use the analysis results to control or improve processes and procedures.
In addition to achieving comprehensive data traceability, how to obtain on-site data and realize the monitoring of the whole life cycle of automotive chip use has also become the focus and demand of more industry leaders.
Based on existing advantages, for the automotive industry chain, pudifei can not only provide real-time control and analysis data before the chip enters the automotive supply chain, but also provide unique data for the users of automotive chips. Yu Guanyuan said that Pudifei has worked more closely with users of automotive chips, such as system suppliers and automobile manufacturers, and can design some IP or modules specifically for these customers in combination with their actual needs, so as to better achieve zero defects and reduce the failure caused by chip problems.
For example, there are many key chips in modules such as sensors for automatic driving, not only in the design, manufacturing, packaging and testing of chips to ensure zero defects, but also to ensure that they are still in zero defects in the operation of the car. In the life cycle of a smart electric vehicle, if the chip on the car is equipped with the IP module of Pudi Fei, it can find problems in the self-inspection and report the problem to the software on the car in time, and finally this information will be presented on the large screen of the car central control, and the owner can drive the car to the original factory to replace the module in time to avoid accidents. This application has been implemented in a module of an autonomous driving system, and if it is used on a large scale in automatic driving and battery systems in the future, it will take a big step towards the vision of "zero accidents" in automobiles.
Write at the end
For automotive electronics, zero-defect requirements are everywhere, and the data that needs to be analyzed and verified is getting larger and larger, so software also needs to be constantly innovated. Yu Guanyuan said that Pudifei will introduce the concept of block chain (blockchain) into the entire supply chain to ensure the security and transparency of the supply chain to the greatest extent, so that each step of the information can be disseminated to the world, the established facts of the entire supply chain cannot be changed, and the risk of fake chips flowing into the automotive industry can be effectively eliminated. At the same time, the development of intelligent electric vehicles themselves is changing with each passing day, the demand for software is also constantly innovating, Pudifei will consolidate the existing advantages, the future will also invest more resources, and seek to work closely with more industrial customers, targeted research and development innovation, to meet these needs.