Studying the automotive semiconductor market, I think there are several good entry points at present, on the one hand, the current automotive industry generally believes that the chip supply shortage will continue until 2022; at the same time, global auto companies based on the thinking of the next generation of architecture, have begun to directly contact automotive chip partners (car companies expect to decouple software and hardware, hoping to replace the chip at any time if necessary).
I would like to focus on the changes and thinking in the second direction, especially in the current stage of hot auto chip financing.
Figure 1: Automotive semiconductor market
Part 1
Business structure of enterprise semiconductors
●Business structure of automotive semiconductors
The scale of the automotive semiconductor business in 2020 written above is 34.96 billion US dollars, 2019 is 37.1 billion US dollars, I put the actual business proportion of major automotive chip companies, and the revenue of 2019-2021 listed, you can find: under the condition of lack of cores, several business volumes are greatly improved.
At present, the majority of the automotive semiconductor business revolves around MCU ($7 billion) processors and power devices, a small number of sensor and storage businesses, and the other 33% are very scattered.
▲Table 1.The proportion of automotive business of major chip companies
It is also true that the large ones, such as Infineon, NXP, Renesas, ST, and On Semi, account for more than 30% of the automotive business, and 50% of the high. In this sense, most chip companies in the process of evolution, automotive business enrichment is a certain degree of contingency, the initial development layout is for industrial, consumer use, in the car after the gradual iteration of the begun to use. If the semiconductor business is simply around the automotive business, the entire category and business scale are very limited, and the biggest problem is that the automotive companies have begun to gradually change.
● Auto companies began to layout upstream
GM is working with seven chip suppliers to develop three new microcontroller families that will reduce the number of custom chips in future cars by 95 percent, with GM designating six chip suppliers, Qualcomm, ST, Renesas, NXP, Infineon, and On Semi as its partners, and joining hands with TSMC to anchor production.
Ford motor and chipmaker Global Foundationries are working together to boost supply to Ford Motor and the U.S. auto industry.
Note: The two non-binding "strategic partnerships" may involve increasing capacity and developing jointly in several chip categories. The terms of the deal did not disclose whether Ford would provide funding or commit to reserve capacity at GlobalFoundries' current or future plants.
Outside of U.S. auto companies, Nissan is also using more versatile, off-the-shelf chips. The changes in these depots are, on the one hand, to cope with the chip supply cut in 2021, and on the other hand, to focus on the demand for chips in the EE architecture – automakers need to establish more direct relationships with chip suppliers to go to the next step.
Figure 2: Chip formulation and strategic alliance of automobile enterprises
Part 2
How big is the market for automotive MCUs in the short term
That is, according to the previous 2020 $7 billion, this is Infineon and NXP's two forecasts for the MCU market, MCU in the powertrain growth rate of 5.7%, chassis is 11.5%, ADAS is 34%, domain controllers are 50%.
Under the condition of centralized computing power, this prediction may be correct for Infineon, but for the entire MCU market, it is replaced by SOC high-computing chip, and the previous function is realized through the virtualization of the ECU.
Figure 3: Revenue from Infineon's AURIX
The following table is Infineon's distribution spectrum, TC39x series is mainly used for safety backup, this function is used by most automotive companies, Infineon's good point is that there are more existing sites in terms of power and chassis safety.
Note: Chassis and power evolution is slower during the introduction of new architectures.
Figure 4.Infineon's deployment on two typical platforms
The number is in NXP's judgment of MCU compute nodes, which is also estimated according to more and more, under the Zonal architecture, the processor is 60.
Note: My understanding is that these processors do not necessarily come in the form of MCUs, and may evolve into specialized chips with computing cores.
Figure 5. NXP's estimates for the future
Summary: In tracking the changes in this market, domestic and foreign auto companies have begun to converge their semiconductor use range, restrict Tier1's platform selection rights, more reusable, and the direction of software and hardware decoupling is going. This is inevitable for automotive semiconductors to move towards a further Matthew effect, and it is really important to invest in this field and what the endgame is.