According to a report by third-party agency Yole, the average capacity of smartphones in 2021 is 105GB, while the average storage capacity in the automotive sector is only 34GB. However, by 2026, driven by the "new four modernizations" (networking, intelligence, electrification, and sharing), the average storage capacity of cars is expected to reach 483GB. Storage giant Micron has also said that in the next decade, the automobile will become one of the fastest growing markets in the memory and storage industry.
Judging from this trend, the storage industry will have a lot of potential in the automotive sector. Therefore, in this issue of Suntech Observation, Suntech Jun will discuss the connection between storage and intelligent vehicle development with you, and analyze the opportunities and challenges therein to provide reference for related industries.
01
Automotive intelligence is unstoppable
Overall, the intelligent car is a comprehensive system that concentrates on the use of computers, modern sensors, information fusion, communications, artificial intelligence and automatic control technologies, integrating environmental perception, planning decision-making, multi-level assisted driving and other functions, and is a typical high-tech complex.
In the minds of automakers, the car of the future will be a self-driving car that guides drivers to avoid congested and accident areas, while providing a wealth of online accommodation and entertainment. According to a survey report by the International Automotive Economics Institute in California, the next stage of car sales will start with intelligent cars.
In the past year, the penetration rate of the entire new energy vehicle has increased significantly, but behind it, whether it is Tesla or the new car-making forces, what they are laying out is still around the intelligent cockpit and automatic driving in the future car. According to a previous report by Damo, in the lifetime use value of a car, the cost of buying a car accounts for only 45%, and the remaining 55% will include insurance, automatic driving, charging, in-car entertainment services, etc.
At the consumption level, with the rise of the younger generation, more consumers prefer new energy vehicles, in addition to cost-effective, appearance, performance and other parameters, whether it is intelligent has also become one of the reference indicators for young consumers to buy a car.
As a result, we can see that although it is also plagued by "lack of core", the main electrification and intelligent new energy vehicle companies have handed over a beautiful answer sheet in 2021. Take the new domestic car-making force "Wei Xiaoli" as an example: Xiaopeng Automobile achieved a total annual delivery of 98,155 vehicles, which is 3.6 times that of 2020; ideal cars delivered a total of 90,491 vehicles, an increase of 177.4% over 2020; NIO automobile delivered 91,429 vehicles throughout the year, an increase of 109.1% year-on-year, doubling for two consecutive years.
Looking again at Tesla, the leader of new energy vehicles, Tesla delivered 936,172 units worldwide in 2021, an increase of about 87.4% year-on-year. In the fourth quarter of 2021 alone, Tesla completed the production of 305,840 vehicles and delivered 308,600 vehicles.
02
Intelligent upgrades of automobiles require more storage support
Over the past two decades, automotive innovation has focused on hardware. For example, the efficiency of the internal combustion engine increased significantly during this period. However, over the past few years, the automotive industry's focus has shifted to digitalization, automation and electrification. The electric, networked and automated nature of automobiles is advancing rapidly. New trends will require the continuous accumulation, processing and sharing of data received from sensors and infotainment systems.
Memory chips are widely used in smart cars, and functions such as smart cockpits, internet of vehicles, and automatic driving all require certain storage space to support their normal operation.
In terms of intelligence, automatic driving has significantly boosted the memory chip market, with the improvement of automatic driving level, AI capabilities gradually increase, vehicles need to process a large amount of data captured by sensors in real time, that is, have the ability to integrate information and immediately make judgments, which puts forward higher requirements for bandwidth and space requirements.
According to Micron Technology, L2/L3 self-driving cars require about 100GB/s of memory bandwidth, and the average capacity requirements for DRAM and NAND Flash are about 8GB and 25GB. When the level of automatic driving is raised to L4/L5, the demand for bandwidth and memory chip capacity increases exponentially, of which the demand for memory bandwidth is increased to 300GB/s and 1TB/s, respectively, and the average capacity requirements for DRAM and NAND Flash are increased to about 30GB and 200GB, respectively.
According to Counterpoint's predictions, in 2025, various devices or functions of L4 self-driving cars will require more storage capacity. For example, the sensor will generate 1-5TB of data, AV (Autonomous Vehicle, that is, self-driving car), infotainment, operating system, applications need 200-270GB of storage space, black boxes, offline maps and navigation require 6-30GB and 3-6GB of data storage, respectively. Compared with now, this is undoubtedly a large storage capacity demand upgrade.
In addition, electrification also has upgrade requirements for car storage, such as the core components of electric vehicles BMS (battery management system) need to record and store data in real time, covering car voltage and current, temperature, motor speed, etc., these data need to be erased at a higher frequency in real time and continuously, so with the continuous improvement of electric vehicle endurance, charging speed, etc., there is a large upgrade demand for the cycle life, erasing speed and power consumption of the memory chip.
According to IHS statistics, in 2019, on-board memory chips accounted for only 8% of the automotive semiconductor market, but as the acceleration trend of the automotive "new four modernizations" process became clearer, the amount of vehicle processing and stored data increased significantly, and it is expected that this figure will be greatly increased to 12% in 2025, and the global market size will reach 8.15 billion US dollars. With a compound growth rate of more than 17% from 2021 to 2025, it is one of the fastest growing categories in the automotive semiconductor industry. In addition, according to the data of the Financial Associated Press, the hardware cost of bicycle storage devices in 2017 was only about 20 US dollars, and the cost is expected to reach 300-500 US dollars to develop to the level of automatic driving L4/L5, and the automotive memory chip market ushered in a high-speed growth stage of volume and price increase.
03
Automotive storage remains a challenge
At the same time, there are often challenges in the storage of vehicles, due to the particularity of their use scenarios, often require higher quality and stability. Taking NAND Flash with greater capacity requirements as an example, Western Digital pointed out four major pain points that customers will encounter in the usual use process:
First, durability. NAND Flash has a rewrite life limit, and the automotive field for the vehicle requirements are generally in half a year or ten years, according to the workload, choose a piece of 8GB capacity of storage, the total amount of ten years of writes can support 20TB. The problem is that there are a lot of new applications that are constantly emerging and updated, and as the service life increases, the workload may be much larger than previously expected. This results in problem-free eight or ten years of safe driving, but as the workload increases, THE CONSUMPTION OF NAND Flash's on-board capacity accelerates, and it may be impossible to start the machine in the fourth or fifth year.
Second, performance. Because there are more and more applications and more and more complex applications, the requirements for storage are also getting higher and higher. Today's storage, including NAND Flash, has different protocol specifications, and the product performance differences are also quite large. Therefore, how to choose a suitable storage product is a headache for customers.
Third, partitioning. According to the different frequencies of data use in the car, many customers have to do partitioning, such as one for storing the system, one for frequently used data, and the other for infrequently used data. However, it should be known that most NAND Flash products on the market do not support physical partitioning, which means that if one of the partitions is damaged, it means that the entire disk has been damaged.
Fourth, the content is pre-burned. Now the popularity of high-precision maps is getting higher and higher, map files are getting bigger and bigger, if you still keep the previous online burning, it will occupy a lot of space and time in the production line, which is not cost-effective. As a result, a more cost-effective pre-burn came into being, and the mainstream on the market is 25% capacity pre-programming, and there are also 100% capacity pre-programming. However, for 100% volumetric pre-fired products, the number of late reflow soldering will be limited.
04
Storage manufacturers have increased the layout of vehicle storage
Although the challenges and opportunities are the same, it can be seen that storage manufacturers, especially the original factories, have increased the layout of automotive storage products:
In November last year, SK Hynix said that it obtained iso 26262:2018 FSM standard certification for automotive storage semiconductor companies, an international standard for functional safety. SK Hynix explained that obtaining this certification lays a solid foundation for SK Hynix to lead the development of the automotive storage semiconductor market and strengthens the company's product competitiveness.
In December 2021, Samsung Electronics said it had begun offering a whole new line of memory chips for electric vehicles and other automotive applications, including 256GB PCIe Gen 3 NVMe BGA SSD for infotainment systems, 2GB GDDR6 DRAM and 2GB DDR4 DRAM, and 2GB GDDR6 DRAM and 128GB UFS for autonomous driving systems.
In December 2021, storage giant Micron Technology reported its latest quarterly earnings report, with an operating profit of $2.631 billion, compared to just $866 million in the same period last year. Micron said it has benefited from memory and storage capacity upgrades caused by the rapid advancement of automotive infotainment systems and driver assistance applications.
Judging from the various actions and voices of storage manufacturers, as the smart car market becomes more and more hot, storage products will usher in new growth points after PCs and smartphones.