China's local automotive-grade MCUs have once again achieved an important breakthrough
In the past, due to the extremely high entry threshold and strict standards of automotive-grade MCUs, most of China's local automotive-grade MCUs were only used in low-end control functions such as wipers, air conditioning control, etc., while mid-to-high-end control fields such as power systems, chassis systems, and intelligent driving were "highlands" that were difficult for local manufacturers to reach.
Nowadays, Xinchi Technology's automotive-grade MCU-E3 series has entered the core application area of automobiles, and has successfully achieved large-scale mass production in high-end control fields such as power systems, chassis systems, and intelligent driving, which is undoubtedly a major breakthrough in the local automotive-grade MCU industry.
So, behind the core application fields of automobiles, what are the core competitive advantages of Xinchi Technology's automotive-grade MCU products?
The first automotive MCU "mass production on the car" active suspension in China
In the past few years, many domestic startups and chip companies have poured into the automotive-grade MCU track, but due to multiple factors such as the high threshold of automotive-grade MCUs, most of them are concentrated in low-end applications such as automotive wipers and lights, while high-end application scenarios such as electronic power steering systems and electronic body stability systems have few local companies achieved mass production breakthroughs.
Behind this, high-performance, high-safety automotive-grade MCUs have extremely strict requirements for temperature-resistant working capacity, service life, operational stability, reliability, etc., and need to provide more hardware and software security features to ensure the safety and reliability of automotive electronics in extremely complex and high-risk scenarios.
For example, the suspension controller (CDC), as the control core of the electronically controlled suspension system, the suspension controller (CDC) can effectively improve the comfort and handling of the vehicle by controlling the shock absorber and air spring, which requires the MCU control chip to have high processing performance and higher functional safety level, so as to meet the extremely high requirements of the chassis for safety and real-time.
According to the data, Xinchi Technology's high-performance automotive-grade MCU product - E3 series will be launched in 2022, which can provide single-core, dual-core, quad-core and six-core CPU configurations, with a single CPU frequency of up to 800MHz, of which 4 cores can be configured as dual-core lockstep or independent operation, filling the gap in the domestic high-end high-security automotive MCU market.
It is worth mentioning that the E3 series has set very high stability and safety goals at the beginning of the design, not only meeting the automotive reliability standards to reach AEC-Q100 Grade 1, but also the first domestic MCU product to obtain the German Rheinland ASIL D/SIL 3 functional safety product certification, and the first domestic MCU product to obtain the national secret level 2 certification, leading the industry's high standards in functional safety and information security levels.
In addition, the mass-produced version MCAL in the E3 series to support the application of AUTOSAR is also provided by Xinchi Technology, and it also meets the functional safety, and the relevant functional safety certification work at these software levels is in progress.
He Hong, R&D Director of Mingran Technology, said: "Xinchi E3 series products are not only in a leading position in terms of performance and functional safety, but also have leading advantages in the underlying code maturity and software configuration, which fully meet the needs of Mingran Technology to build industry-class CDC products. ”
Mingran CDC is the first landing application of Xinchi Technology E3 series automotive-grade MCU on active suspension. It is understood that Mingran Technology CDC is equipped with Xinchi automotive-grade MCU, with two Cortex-R5F lockstep cores with a main frequency of 600MHz, 3MBytes on-chip SRAM, memory protection unit and hardware encryption module, etc., while integrating a high-precision proportional solenoid valve drive module and a six-axis inertial sensor (IMU), supporting PSI5 communication, CAN-FD communication, FOTA remote refresh and other functions, while complying with AUTOSAR software architecture, ASPICE development process, ISO26262 ASILD functional safety, and Cyber Security information security requirements.
At present, the CDC has been officially mass-produced on Chery Tiggo 9, Xingtu Yaoguang and other models.
High-performance automotive-grade MCUs are on the rise
With the acceleration of automotive intelligence and electrification, the market demand for automotive-grade MCUs is increasing, and it is ushering in a larger market space.
According to the data of "Advanced Engineering Intelligent Automobile Research Institute", intelligent car-related system products such as air suspension systems and high-end intelligent driving systems have become a new incremental track, and have successively entered the market dividend cycle of large-scale cars, and are gradually penetrating from high-end models to lower-price models.
For example, in terms of suspension systems, monitoring data from the Advanced Engineering Intelligent Vehicle Research Institute shows that from January to August 2023, the number of new vehicles delivered with CDC in the Chinese market (excluding imports and exports) reached 863,900 units, a year-on-year increase of 49.15%, entering the track of rapid growth.
In addition, the standard amount of front-mounted air suspension and MRC electromagnetic suspension is also rapidly increasing, and it is gradually penetrating from high-end models to civilian models.
In this context, Chinese chip manufacturers have ushered in an important window period for development. However, with the evolution of automotive electronic and electrical architecture from distributed architecture to centralized architecture and central computing architecture, the automotive-grade MCU market has also opened a new round of reshuffling and upgrading.
According to the data of "Advanced Engineering Intelligent Vehicle Research Institute", 32-bit MCUs are now becoming the mainstream products in China's automotive-grade MCU market, and are accelerating the replacement of low-end 8/16-bit products in the past.
In the past, the whole vehicle required multiple different ECUs (MCUs with different levels) to control different functions, but with the accelerated reference of domain controllers, high-performance automotive-grade MCUs are gradually replacing multiple low-end MCUs.
Therefore, automotive-grade MCUs with high computing power and high performance are becoming the mainstream of the market.
It is precisely for this reason that the E3 series, which has the characteristics of high performance, high safety and high reliability, has attracted much attention from the market as soon as it was launched.
At present, more than 100 customers have used the E3 series of Xinchi Technology for product design, covering core domain control fields such as chassis, steering, power, BMS battery management, and ADAS intelligent driving.
It is worth mentioning that as an automotive chip company with a full-scenario layout, Xinchi's SoC products such as intelligent cockpit, intelligent driving and central gateway have achieved large-scale mass production, and its customers cover more than 90% of China's car manufacturers. With the continuous mass production of MCU products, by the end of 2023, the total shipment of products in the three fields of intelligent cabin, intelligent driving and intelligent control is expected to exceed 3 million pieces.
It is foreseeable that with the continuous evolution and evolution of automotive electronic architecture, with the industry's "ceiling" level of performance parameters and functional safety certification level, Xinchi Technology E3 series will also "conquer" more automotive core application areas.
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