Chen Gang, general manager of BYD Semiconductor: The development of vehicle-grade chips requires a mesh collaboration model

At the Global CEO Summit held today, Chen Gang, General Manager of BYD Semiconductor Co., Ltd., delivered a speech on the theme of the new development of the core ecosystem - the overall solution of automotive grade semiconductors.

Chen Gang mentioned that the automobile is the largest industry in the industrial field, and the semiconductor market is developing to a trillion-dollar scale to catch up with the automotive industry. Therefore, how to develop the two industries together has become a key issue that both industries are paying attention to.

First of all, Chen Gang introduced the overview of China's new energy market. The penetration rate of domestic new energy vehicles in April this year was 10%, and by September this year, it quickly rose to 19.5%, and it is conservatively estimated that it will exceed 20% by December. The national ministry's earlier plan for new energy vehicles was to reach a penetration rate of 20% in 2025, and this goal will be completed four years ahead of schedule.

The rapid development of China's new energy vehicle market has exceeded the expectations of all walks of life, which has led to another hot topic this year, "lack of core". According to Chen Gang, the semiconductor value on the body of new energy vehicles is n times that of traditional fuel vehicles, and with the rich upgrading of new energy vehicle functions, this n will become larger and larger; but the new energy vehicles with power devices alone will have twice as much semiconductor cost as traditional cars. With the development of new energy vehicles from the L1 and L2 stages to the future L4 and L5 development, the amount of image sensors and control calculations used in automobiles will increase significantly.

Under the momentum of this rapid development, the automotive industry is rapidly developing with the help of electrification to intelligence, creating a huge market increase for automotive-grade semiconductors, so BYD also calls on Chinese semiconductors to participate more in the automotive industry. Because only 4% of the current fab capacity is distributed to the automotive industry, but the automotive industry accounts for 20% of the semiconductor application market, the gap between production capacity and application needs to be solved urgently.

After that, Chen Gang introduced the ecological overview of new energy vehicle chips. New energy vehicles are the transformation of the power system and the upgrading of the new driving concept. The demand for semiconductors for new energy vehicles is mainly based on three levels: perception layer, decision-making layer and execution layer.

The main semiconductors needed in the perception layer are various sensors, such as image sensors, and the application of sensors in new energy vehicles has not been widely used. In the future, three or four hundred sensors may be needed in a single car.

The decision-making layer will play an important role in the future of the car, and with the widespread application of sensors, the amount of data to be calculated by the decision-making layer may reach several thousand terabytes. When autonomous driving develops to L4 and L5, VCU must implement complex 3D modeling functions, which will have higher and higher computing power for image calculus.

The execution layer is to pass the information at the sensing level to the decision-making layer, and to pass the information of the decision-making layer to the power chip and the MCU.

The development of new energy vehicles has brought challenges to power chips in terms of current density, integration, reliability, loss and cost. In the past, a 6-inch wafer could only provide semiconductors for one vehicle, and through process upgrading, design iteration and other means, a 6-inch wafer in the future may meet the needs of two or three vehicles. This requires the joint efforts of scientific and technological innovation capabilities, basic scientific research and process innovation.

Chen Gang introduced that BYD's iGBT has moved from 2.5 generations to 4.0, and this year BYD will launch 6.0 generations. Under the same current density, BYD's new generation of chips has a smaller area and lower losses. The improvement of power semiconductors requires technological breakthroughs in packaging processes, heat dissipation performance, and composite materials.

Finally, Chen Gang introduced how the upstream and downstream of the industry can collaborate to develop the ecosystem of automotive-grade semiconductors.

Chen Gang believes that the cooperation of vehicle-grade chips should abandon the traditional vertical collaboration model and adopt a network-like collaboration model. In the vertical collaboration mode, only single-line contact can be carried out, and the car factory cannot communicate directly with the chip design link; while in the mesh collaboration mode, the car manufacturer can directly communicate with enterprises in different links, synchronize information, and develop together. The lack of core in cars this year is precisely because upstream manufacturers do not synchronize the information of the automobile market in real time, resulting in insufficient capacity planning.

Chen Gang expects the number of new energy vehicles in China to reach 6 million next year, which is a huge opportunity for China's automakers and semiconductor manufacturers. BYD Auto hopes to work hand in hand with the electronics industry, new industrial fields and semiconductor colleagues to make domestic automotive grade semiconductors blossom and bear fruit as soon as possible.

With potential market and innovative talents, China Semiconductor can look forward to the future.