Steve Jobs once likened: "Fairchild Semiconductor is like a mature dandelion, as soon as you blow it, the seeds of this entrepreneurial spirit flutter everywhere." ”
Spintrol likened itself to the last seed of Fairchild, drifted to China, devoted itself to the motor control chip industry, and took root.
On March 29, 2023, during the 2023 International Integrated Circuit Exhibition and Symposium (IIC) hosted by AspenCore, Ding Wen, deputy general manager of sales of Xuanzhi Technology, attended the IIC spring "core" product launch conference, shared the development status and trend in the field of automotive motor control, and announced the blockbuster innovative product of Xuanzhi Technology: the built-in N-FET pre-drive microcontroller SPD1179 used in automotive brushless DC (brushed) motors.
Ding Wen, deputy general manager of sales of Xuanzhi Technology
According to Ding Wen, Xuanzhi Technology, formerly known as the motor product line division of Fairchild Semiconductor Co., Ltd., was spun off and operated independently through a management buyout at the end of 2014, focusing on the research and development of highly integrated motor control chips and advanced algorithms. At present, it has branches in Shanghai, Shenzhen, Qingdao, Hong Kong, Turkey and other places.
In terms of product line, Xuanzhi Technology mainly has two categories of products: motor control and mobile phone lithium battery protection, of which motor control products are still the main channel that Xuanzhi focuses on, and can provide three different sub-categories of products to customers, namely motor microcontrollers, intelligent drives and intelligent power modules.
Xuanzhi Technology product category
It is worth noting that Xuanzhi Technology's motor control microcontroller uses two cores: ARM and RISC-V. In this regard, Ding Wen said that the fundamental starting point is based on the needs of customers and applications. For example, the 32-bit ARM Cortex M3/M4 core is more for the general domain and for non-high-performance scenarios; The high-performance 64-bit RISC-V core is suitable for scenarios with high computing power requirements, such as servo control or industrial control, and the ISC-V core is benchmarked against the ARM R5 series. In addition, from an open source perspective, RISC-V cores are more controlled and more accepted by customers.
Since independence, Xuanzhi Technology has successfully mass-produced two generations of motor control chips, and have been widely used in emerging consumption, white goods, power tools and industrial control and other fields, with a cumulative shipment of nearly 60 million units to large customers.
At the same time, after years of research and development and verification, Xuanzhi Technology officially released a number of automotive-grade highly integrated motor control chips, and will soon be put into mass production.
The SPD1179 is the first automotive-grade system-on-chip (SoC) microcontroller that meets the ASIL-B level of functional safety in China, providing a high-performance, highly integrated and reliable solution for automotive 12V DC motor applications.
Entering the automotive market, the characteristics and advantages of Xuanzhi Technology
In recent years, the trend of "new four modernizations" of automobiles has triggered a new round of changes in the industry and promoted the growth of the semiconductor industry. The number of semiconductor devices required for bicycles is growing rapidly, including brushless DC and brushed DC motors used in 12V systems in vehicles.
In the current automotive application field, although 48V has emerged, 12V is still the mainstream low-voltage DC motor platform in automotive electronics, and the application scenarios include thermal management, body electronics and chassis and many other related fields.
Common application scenarios of automotive 12V DC motors
From the perspective of drive scheme, Ding Wen divides the above many application scenarios into four categories according to the number of drive motors and the size of power: multi-motor low-power scenarios, single-motor low-power scenarios, single-motor medium-power scenarios, and single-motor high-power scenarios.
Such use scenarios that are usually powered by low-voltage 12V networks often have extremely high requirements for the BOM cost, weight and volume, and conversion efficiency, so the mainstream scheme of integrating MCU, pre-drive, power management LDO and bus transceiver into a single chip has gradually formed in motor control. Xuanzhi Technology's SPD1179 is suitable for single-motor medium power field, that is, through a highly integrated SoC, combined with external MOSFETs for motor drive.
For the advantages of SPD1179 chip, Ding Wen introduced from the aspects of performance, integration and reliability:
- High performance: SPD1179 has a built-in ARM Cortex-M4F core, up to 100MHz main frequency, providing up to 128KB Flash, 32KB SRAM and 1KB EEPROM, providing customers with sufficient computing power and storage space.
- High integration: The SPD1179 provides customers with the industry's highest level of integration, including 13-bit high-speed SAR ADC, 2-channel PGA, 2-channel analog comparator, 3-channel phase comparator and BEMF voltage divider circuit, current pre-drive (excellent EMC performance), multi-channel LDO, LIN transceiver, and rich interfaces including CAN and CAN-FD.
- High reliability: The SPD1179 provides customers with reliable functional safety features, including ECC protection for full memory, dedicated ADC for critical voltage background detection, VDS overcurrent monitoring for external MOSFETs, mains high-side E-fuse (anti-reverse switching), open-circuit short circuit detection, backup clock, watchdog interrupt (or reset), and more.
In addition, the advantages of SPD1179 are also reflected in the SoC chip design, where the MCU wafer and the high-voltage driver wafer are independent. The advantage of this is that when the future car enters 48V motor control, the upgrade of the digital MCU wafer and the drive wafer can be done separately and in parallel, and if higher computing power or more interfaces are required, only the MCU part needs to be upgraded. If there is no requirement to improve the computing power and interface, you only need to upgrade the withstand voltage module. It can be seen that Xuanzhi Technology has accumulated one step earlier than competitors in adapting to future 48V automotive applications.
SPD1179 module diagram
It is worth mentioning that the SPD1179 series is available in QFN48 and QFN56 packages, which can meet the needs of different I/O resources.
With the above advantages, the SPD1179 chip can replace the mainstream products in the market such as Infineon's TLE989x/8x/7x/6x/5x, NXP S922 series, etc. SPD1179 chip began mass production and sampling at the end of last year, and in the testing of many OEMs, primary and secondary suppliers, Q3 is expected to enter mass production.
The launch of SPD1179 new products of Xuanzhi Technology not only contributes to the localization process of automotive-grade motor control chips, but also escorts the supply stability of the automotive industry chain.
Write at the end
As a Fabless company, Xuanzhi Technology outsources chip manufacturing and packaging and testing to third-party suppliers. At present, the company has a perfect Fabless quality management system, including ISO9001, ISO26262 ASIL-B, AEC-Q and other products and process system certification.
At the same time, Xuanzhi Technology has a very rich mature IP with independent intellectual property rights. These IPs are involved from hardware to algorithms, which can enable customers to use Xuanzhi Technology's chips with confidence without worrying about intellectual property issues, and can achieve high reliability. At the same time, these independent IPs can help customers create differentiated advantages and achieve better performance and integration.
For the company's future development plan, Ding Wen said that the acceptance of domestic automotive chips by foreign car manufacturers or joint venture car manufacturers around the world needs a longer process. Xuanzhi Technology will focus on the step-by-step strategy, first serve domestic customers, and will also actively expand to foreign customers.
As the current customers gradually go abroad, into the supply system of Mercedes-Benz, BMW or European and American OEMs. We believe that following local suppliers out of China will provide a very good preparation for Xuanzhi Technology's next presence in Europe and North America.
Source: Content original by Semiconductor Industry Watch (ID: icbank), author | Li Chenguang