Deep Sound Original · The author | Chen Wenqi
Price increases, allocation reductions, suspension of production... There is no shortage of new stories in the new energy vehicle industry, but these news do not seem to be so friendly to consumers. In the apologetic explanation, the car company invariably mentioned a helpless reason, the lack of core.
Affected by the epidemic and sudden natural disasters, there are problems in the production capacity of the chip supply side, and market behaviors such as hoarding goods have aggravated the mismatch of demand and the chaos of the supply chain. But in the final analysis, the core reason for the lack of core is the upgrading of the quality of demand and the surge in the number of demand. Under the trend of "new four modernizations" (electrification, networking, intelligence, and sharing) in the automotive industry, the number and specifications of chips on bicycles have both increased.
The higher the level of autonomous vehicles, the greater the number of sensor chips required, the higher the number of chips on new energy vehicles Image source: Deloitte Chip Industry Series White Paper
There is a "danger" there is a "machine", it is precisely because of this unprecedented industrial momentum, so that domestic auto chip manufacturers see the future of the bright - capital, xinchi technology, black sesame, horizon and other automotive semiconductor manufacturers financing continuously, BYD semiconductor sprint IPO; products, a variety of R & D output rhythm significantly accelerated, last week xinchi released the car rules MCU E3 series, black sesame said that this year to release 7nm process of automatic driving chips ... From traditional car companies to new forces, the news of core manufacturing has been one after another, and people from all walks of life have entered the game in various postures such as investment, joint venture, and self-research.
Such a fierce struggle scene can't help but make people ask: what is the current supply and demand situation of the automotive semiconductor market? The pace of domestic self-research is accelerating, how should manufacturers bite this hard bone? How long will it take for domestic vehicle-grade chips to be mass-produced and put on the car?
Under the core shortage window period, the undercurrent of the automotive semiconductor industry is surging, product competition, landing challenges, supply chain reshuffle and the game of discourse power are upgraded. The expansion of market capacity, the product competition of the entering enterprises, and the breakthrough of the technical level are all changing the market pattern of the vehicle specification chip.
A new era of automotive chips has arrived.
The challenge of the movement
According to the type of function, automotive-grade semiconductors can be roughly divided into computing and control chips, memory, power semiconductors, sensors, wireless communications and vehicle interface chips.
They are "all over" the vehicle,from brake systems, gauges, screens, sunroofs, headlights, wipers to remote keyes. This has also led to the lack of a few key chips, car companies can not deliver, or reduce the allocation.
Behind the new four modernizations of automobiles is the transformation of automotive electronic and electrical architecture from the traditional distributed to the "centralized" direction, which further promotes the transformation of the demand for new devices and performance.
The application of chips in automobiles Source: Founder Securities Automotive Semiconductor Research Framework Special Report
However, compared with industrial-grade and consumer-grade chips, vehicle-grade chips encounter higher-level challenges in research and development, manufacturing, compliance, mass production and other aspects.
Because it is closely related to people's travel, the vehicle specification chip has a tighter grasp of the two basic lines of "safety" and "reliability". From the perspective of R& D difficulty, in the million chip scale, the probability of allowing consumer chips to make mistakes is 300-500, while the requirements for vehicle-grade chips are infinitely close to 0, which greatly lengthens its design, research and development, and verification cycles.
The raw materials, IP, and packaging testing of the car specification chip are also more expensive than the consumer chip, and in terms of packaging testing, due to the test of the limit scenarios such as three temperatures unique to the car regulation, the optical test cost is about 5 times that of the consumer chip.
An automotive chip also needs to pass multiple certifications after production to get the "admission ticket" of the market, including ISO 26262 (the international standard for functional safety of road vehicles), AEC-Q100 (vehicle reliability test standard), etc., which is not only the verification of the safety and reliability of chip products, but also an important consideration index for customers.
The certification process for vehicle-grade chips is extremely difficult and even "anti-human". Qiu Yujing, CEO of Xinchi, said, "Functional safety certification ASIL D requires reverse thinking. It is not that the circuit is designed to achieve the desired result, but in the case of not knowing where it will be wrong and various situations can occur, what kind of results will come out of this circuit, and how to resist the wrong result, which is the most difficult. This is an anti-human mindset. Every engineer thinks every day about what will happen to this place wrong, what will happen to that place wrong, through various processes, verification means, to catch all these errors, this is very difficult. ”
In addition, because of the nature of the car's non-fast consumables, the service life of the chip is also a barrier. The life cycle of a car is generally more than 10 years, which means 10-15 years of long-term supply guarantee and higher production line maintenance costs for manufacturers.
From the perspective of market dimension, international automotive semiconductor manufacturers have occupied the main share of the market for a long time, and the head concentration is high, domestic manufacturers start late, the foundation is weak, and there are many competitors who need to be surpassed in front of them.
According to Omdia data, in 2020, the market share of the world's top ten vehicle-grade semiconductor manufacturers will reach 60%, led by Infineon, NXP, Renesas Electronics, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments, etc. Tier1 parts suppliers such as Bosch have a strong voice in the face of OEMs.
Although the endogenous demand of the Chinese market expands rapidly with the development of the new energy industry, the localization rate of the core is low, and in the special period of lack of core, the passive and tense posture of the car companies is highlighted.
Despite the challenges, the lack of core window and the growing demand in the local market have given new entrants new opportunities.
Chances of breaking the game
Looking back at the automotive industry in recent years, some trends have gradually become clear: the traditional fuel vehicle business has entered a bottleneck, and the incremental market brought by the new four modernizations has attracted many new players to enter; car companies are also breaking through the traditional supply chain pattern and deeply participating in various links, the relationship between chip suppliers and car companies is getting closer; the role of different regions and markets in the global division of labor is also quietly changing.
In the process of integration, chip manufacturers need to quickly and accurately card slots and actively adapt to the dynamic changes in the relationship with car companies.
"Going with the flow" are the four words that Qiu Yujing mentioned many times in her dialogue with "Deep Sound". In her understanding, chip manufacturers not only need to be able to judge the general trend, but also to be able to accurately step on the rhythm of demand in terms of product matching.
Recently, The Core Chi released the high-performance vehicle specification MCU E3 series products, and it is not difficult to see the "homeopathy" of the Core Chi in detail studying the products and layout ideas of this series.
The first is the process of the chip itself.
The E3 series using TSMC's 22nm vehicle-based process has up to 6 CPU cores, 4 of which can be configured as dual-core locksteps or operate independently. The main frequency is as high as 800MHz, and the processing power and real-time performance are greatly improved compared with the mainstream 200MHz-300MHz products on the market.
In this round of lack of cores, the most scarce is the MCU, because of its high process complexity and concentrated production capacity, and the slow process of domestic substitution, only a small number of Chinese manufacturers can mass-produce low-end car specification MCUs, but the mainstream factory delivery cycle was basically delayed by about 2 times last year.
Source: Deloitte Chip Industry Series White Paper
In terms of vehicle specifications, the SingH E3 has set very high stability and safety goals from the beginning of the design: AEC-Q100 Grade 1 and ISO 26262 ASIL D, both of which are industry-leading levels.
In terms of functions and scenarios, the E3 series MCU chip can be fully applied to scenarios such as in-line chassis, brake control, BMS (automotive battery management system), ADAS/automatic driving motion control, body control, gateway, T-Box, HUD, LCD instrumentation, streaming media vision system CMS and so on.
It is worth noting that this is not the release of a single chip, but a comprehensive set of solutions.
Prior to this, Xinchi had released a series of products such as the automatic driving chip "Driving Core" V9, the intelligent cockpit chip "Cabin Core" X9, and the intelligent gateway chip "Network Core" G9.
Coupled with the "core of control" this time, Xinchi has improved the "full scene" layout, and its product line basically covers the core application scenarios of intelligent cars, using a common underlying architecture with a sound underlying operating system and framework. Customers can achieve rapid adaptation, shorten the research and development cycle, and accelerate product launch, which is also in line with the demand of car companies to "define the car". Based on this product portfolio, SINGZS has also released a complete central computing architecture, SCCA 1.0, which can support safe and reliable task deployment and flexible system expansion capabilities, laying the foundation for intelligent vehicle architecture upgrades.
The four series of chip products released by Xin Chi are the "IQ", "Emotional Intelligence", "Communication Ability" and "Action Power" of the car.
Schematic diagram of SINGA Central Computing Architecture SCCA 1.0
The hardships behind it
Rome wasn't built in a day, and it's not easy to make today's results on such a muddy track.
"Watching the chip light up is like waiting for a child to be born." Qiu Yujing said when sharing the bring up process of the E3 series chips with "Deep Sound".
The chip experienced three days and three nights in the seal factory, and was "escorted" into the company's laboratory for bring up in the morning at the agreed time. The "idle people, etc." who have nothing to do with bring up, are waiting outside for the results, and everyone's emotions are repeatedly jumping between nervousness and excitement.
"People who make chips have always been in awe of the industry, because it is too difficult, and every link may be negligently wrong." Qiu Yujing said.
For a car, the MCU can range from as few as 50 to as many as hundreds. Without one, the car cannot be offline. This chip of Xinchi is expected to fill the gap in the domestic high-end high-security level vehicle specification MCU market and provide more and more reliable choices for car companies. It is understood that this chip will be mass-produced in Q3 this year, and 20+ α customers have done product design in advance before the official release.
Qiu Yujing said that in order to fulfill her commitments to customers on time, she must always ask herself "How to do the best in each link?" ”。
At the beginning of 2020, in order to reduce the impact of logistics outages before the Spring Festival, Qiu Yujing and her colleagues personally went to Taiwan to retrieve the chips and reduce the time on logistics transshipment. A few days later, the COVID-19 pandemic broke out.
"If we hadn't paid attention to the commitment to our customers at that time, it was possible that the samples would be sent back years later, and if we hit the epidemic, we might have missed two or three months." It was during the Lunar New Year, for Zhang Qiang, chairman of Xinchi Technology, who was on vacation in Thailand, the vacation turned into grabbing masks, and finally he brought back more than 2,000 masks to the company, and Xinchi was able to become the first batch of enterprises to resume work and production.
The fact that Xinchi can gnaw the hard bones of the car specification chip in a short period of time is not only the manifestation of the technical strength of Chinese manufacturers, but also the accumulation of bits and pieces of details behind it.
Objectively speaking, the domestic automotive semiconductor industry still has a lot to catch up, such as the independent underlying architecture, national standard certification specifications, manufacturing processes and so on. At present, traditional OEMs, new power brands, start-ups, and chip manufacturers have entered the industry with their own advantages and different baggage to open a card slot war. It's all good news for a burgeoning industry.
Entering the post-core lack era, "breaking the game" is the key word, the market, enterprises, technology, products are changing, the new pattern is being nurtured, and domestic chip manufacturers have occupied the position in advance.