With the process of "software-defined car" entering the deep water area, intelligent driving has been rapidly upgraded, and a new round of industrial chain pattern reshaping around the high computing power computing platform and the new domain control architecture has been launched.
At present, the head enterprises have also launched a new generation of domain-controlled electronic and electrical architectures that will be landed soon. In the past year, independent brands have taken the lead in mass production of domestic large computing domain controllers, and then the iterative development of high-performance computing platform + software has become the core indicator of the competitiveness of automobile manufacturers' models, and this trend is also rapidly driving changes in the supply chain pattern.
First of all, the main control chip as the core of the hardware architecture, car companies began to directly cooperate with chip manufacturers, on the one hand, in order to establish a stable supply chain relationship in the future; on the other hand, they hope to start from the demand, carry out customized development of chips, and meet the efficient collaboration of software and hardware under the background of continuous upgrading of the vehicle's electronic architecture.
In addition, domain controllers (soft and hard decoupling) "open" the traditional black box mode, more and more car companies give up the choice of the overall choice of the past packaging, and began to pursue more customization capabilities in the core links such as software, data, and operating systems, which also led to the main engine manufacturer showing a very diversified demand for software and hardware solutions.
All of the above have brought about rapid changes in supply chain relations and cooperation models, and a new card slot war in the field of intelligent vehicles has begun.
First, the competition model is changing, and software will be the main battlefield in the future
Since last year, chip companies at home and abroad have expanded their business boundaries, begun to lay out at the software level, and are committed to the overall solution of software and hardware.
For example, NVIDIA DRIVE open source software stack launched by NVIDIA; Qualcomm's Snapdragon Ride platform also includes security middleware, operating systems and drivers; and Horizon's self-developed chip-based Tiangong opener includes model warehouses, AI chip toolchains and AI application development middleware; Neusoft Ruichi's autonomous driving central computing platform, which uses Horizon 4 Journey 5 chips, supports multi-channel lidar, 16-channel high-definition cameras, millimeter-wave radar, Ultrasonic radar access can realize 360° perceptual redundancy of the whole vehicle and provide L3/L4 level automatic driving functions.
(Neusoft Ruichi Autonomous Driving Central Computing Platform)
Cao Bin, general manager of Neusoft Ruichi, pointed out that the automatic driving system is a combination of software + hardware collaboration, and the chip and software must be upgraded synchronously, on the one hand, the performance of the chip is closely related to the ability of the software, on the other hand, the growth of software is the fundamental driving force for the improvement of the chip computing power.
Chip companies have laid out hardware + software and even full-stack system solutions in various ways, in addition to fully tapping the "capabilities" of chips, the more important purpose is to help downstream customers (Tier1 and OEMs) minimize the workload of hardware and software development, while reducing design complexity, cost and time to market, to build competitive barriers and maximize value.
Behind this, in fact, the demand for suppliers by OEMs has changed.
Due to the different intelligent progress and technical capabilities of each OEM, especially the level of software, the choice of software and hardware systems is also very diversified, and the cooperation model also needs to be fully flexible and diversified.
In addition to the necessary chip + underlying operating system, some customers also need to provide software middleware, and even algorithm frameworks and supporting toolchains to facilitate rapid software deployment and application development; some enterprises also need full-stack overall solutions.
This means that software will become the main battlefield for supply chain companies to meet in the future.
Up to now, continental, ZF, Bosch and other traditional giants have entered the game, in the domain control of basic software, middleware and other fields of layout, and also show full openness, such as can meet the needs of other suppliers (hardware or software designated by car companies) collaborative development Needs In addition, neusoft Ruichi, Yingchi Technology and other software suppliers have emerged on the track.
Cao Bin pointed out that in the future of smart electric vehicles, key components such as batteries and motors will become more and more convergent in the hardware part, and it will be increasingly difficult for car companies to build product differences through hardware. In the future, a large part of the automotive products will be created by the upper application software module to create a personalized driving experience, interactive experience and so on.
For car companies, there is no need to start from the basics. After all, the basic software and middleware of the control unit (including domain controllers and central computing units) are not very related to the differentiation of the terminal, nor will it bring an intuitive experience to the end customer.
In his view, for a long time to come, Tier1 or OEMs need to work closely together with the basic software service providers, keep up with the upgrade of the new architecture, and constantly supplement, improve and upgrade the basic software platform.
In the overall SOA solution proposed by Middle Eastern Soft Ruichi, the basic software platform NeuSAR can adapt to the software and hardware platforms of different instruction sets and unify the packaging interface on it, centralize and standardize the required basic operating environment and development environment interface, and provide a perfect supporting SOA tool chain.
At the same time, in order to make it easier for car companies to develop application software, Neusoft Ruichi and many members of AUTOSEMO have proposed the construction of the AUTOSEMOService Framework (ASF) middle-layer software framework standard for the first time, which can provide system-level services, SOA+, atomic services, vehicle-level system services, dynamic services, etc. for the perspective of SOA service development, realize the reusability of software, and help OEMs accelerate the development process. And reduce the complexity of software development iterations, thereby saving a lot of manpower and material resources.
(ASF Frame diagram)
In the next few years, the pattern of supply chain reconstruction around chips and software is not clear, the traditional single-handed, upstream and downstream supply chain relationship is completely broken, and cooperation and competition coexist.
It is very important to have the ability to form a full-stack overall solution, and there must be enough open and diversified and flexible cooperation models to cope with the next market competition situation, in order to explore a larger value space and a new role positioning in the supply chain architecture.
Second, new opportunities and challenges for domain control
With the upgrading of the vehicle's electronic architecture, the supply chain adjustment has also brought about changes in the market pattern and new opportunities.
In the past year, a number of domestic suppliers have risen rapidly in the integrated track of driving ADAS and berth based on the advantages of more cost-effective and flexible and open localization solutions. Among them, the domain controller (soft and hard decoupling) "opens" the traditional black box mode, and also drives the convergence trend of the two sets of parallel ADAS systems in the past, low-speed parking and high-speed driving. The integrated track has become the best foothold for domestic suppliers to land on a large scale.
According to the monitoring data of The Gaogong Intelligent Automobile Research Institute, in 2021, the number of new cars in the Chinese market (excluding imports and exports) and the front-loading standard equipped with driving ADAS and parking functions is 2.1475 million, most of which still use the traditional distributed ECU architecture.
The cost of the integrated solution is lower, and at the same time it effectively reduces power consumption and reduces the complexity of the vehicle system, and the huge space for market replacement and upgrading has been presented.
Domestic Neusoft Ruichi, Desay SV, Forrittech, Untouchable Technology, Moshi Intelligent, MAXIEYE, Zhixing Technology and many other Chinese suppliers have launched a one-piece solution for the berth, and some companies have taken the lead in mass production or obtained pre-installation fixed-point projects.
The upgraded version of the mobile domain controller launched by Neusoft Ruichi has greatly saved costs compared with the traditional 1V1R+APA technology solution under the advantages of full-stack self-research such as perception, fusion, decision-making, regulation and control, and mapping positioning, and the number and type of sensor access have been further expanded.
It is understood that the sensor access of the upgraded version of the domain controller supports 10-way cameras, 5-channel millimeter-wave radar, 12-channel ultrasonic radar, high-precision maps, etc., and supports the access and processing of 8-megapixel cameras, meeting the ASIL-B ISO26262 functional safety level. At present, this product has been fixed in the front loading of many models, and will achieve front-loading mass production in 2022.
In terms of software, the upgraded version of the integrated domain controller of the parking is also equipped with NeuSAR and related development tools, a basic software product independently developed by Neusoft Ruichi that is compatible with the latest standard of AUTOSAR, as well as related development tools.
If the domain control products for L2 or below are based on cost-effective and rapid mass production of "turnkey" solutions, then the high-level intelligent assisted driving market for L2+ and above is also a test of the ability of enterprises in software and hardware adaptation and collaboration, software architecture deployment, and major enterprises are also joint upstream and downstream resources have been laid out.
Among them, Neusoft Ruichi domain control products, which have advantages in the software field, have been equipped with a self-developed autonomous driving SOA open architecture to support L0-L4 level automatic driving function requirements, and then it will also launch the next generation of upgraded models of the integrated domain controller Computing power will be greatly improved, and the number and type of sensor access will be further expanded.
Horizon also cooperates with a number of intelligent driving solution providers (including Zhongmu Technology, Heduo Technology, Neusoft Ruichi, etc.) to help develop a software and hardware solution for integrated autonomous driving based on the Journey 3, Journey 5 chips, visual perception algorithms and tool chains.
MAXIEYE and Black Sesame Intelligence will successively release the next generation of high-end intelligent driving platform product solutions this year, covering high and low speed scenarios, with high-efficiency central integrated domain controllers, to achieve L2++ driving intelligence and parking intelligent integrated functions.
In the key transformation period of software-defined automobiles and the introduction of domain control architecture, domain control products will also become the focus of attention of car companies, and suppliers also need to make up software capabilities and have the ability to provide diversified service solutions, which is the core barrier in the next stage of market competition.