"So for Autobots, our work is more about how to do a good job of this system architecture, so that it can quickly adapt to different chips and quickly verify different chips."

　　On February 21, 2023, at the 2023 Second Automobile Chip Industry Conference hosted by Geshi Automobile, Ji Donghui, senior director of CAIC Chuangzhi, introduced that Tier1 has a system for chip selection, including the control of project maturity, the qualification and evaluation of the entire supply chain, and the standards for the development, design, mass production and after-sales maintenance of new project products. For example, in the case of mass production, focus on supply guarantee and long-term reliability, Look at the emergency plan made for unexpected problems. Of course, there is also a series of methodological support in quality control.

　　                                                                    Ji Donghui, Senior Director of CAIC Chuangzhi

　　The following is the arrangement of the speech content:

　　In recent years, many people have compared smart cars to large mobile phones. Technically, smart cars and smartphones have many similarities. Mobile phones have eyes (camera), ears (microphone), mouth (speaker), face (screen), brain (SOC chip), and power supply and communication as infrastructure. Smart cars have more eyes, ears, mouth, face, brain and infrastructure. But at the same time, the intelligent vehicle also has the nervous system (vehicle network), skeleton (frame structure) and leg (chassis system) that need faster response time, higher safety and longer service life. In addition, the car also needs to operate in a worse environment, which puts forward higher requirements for reliability.

　　CAIC Chuangzhi's understanding of auto chips

　　Therefore, I think smart cars should not be regarded as big mobile phones. On the contrary, the evolution goal of smart cars will be silicon-based organisms, and the controllers in the car will be similar to the organs. In the era of intelligence, Tier1 is more like a surgeon. It needs to transplant the intelligent controller into the smart car as an organ. The car specification is the most basic matching standard. The car specification requires more extreme working temperature, more risk avoidance means, lower failure rate, and higher service quality.

　　There are many differences between the vehicle specification level and the consumer level. For example, the operating temperature range of the vehicle specification level is wide, and the reliability of consumer electronics is driven by yield; The reliability of automotive electronics is driven by quality. Consumer electronics have few methodologies for quality and risk avoidance (e.g. FMEA). The PPM distribution of consumer products is uneven (the same is true for their specifications, contracts and business models), and the failure rate is 50-100 times higher than that of automobile products. The reliability test specs between JEDEC and AEC-Q equipment are different. ESD protection is different, different humidity sensitivity levels and different lead requirements. The support of vehicle regulations on service and quality is different from that of non-vehicle regulations (such as 8D report)

　　Tier1 has a system for chip selection, including the control of project maturity, the qualification and evaluation of the entire supply chain, and the standards for the development, design, mass production and after-sales maintenance of new project products. For example, in mass production, we should focus on supply assurance, long-term reliability, and emergency plans for unexpected problems. Of course, there is also a series of methodological support in quality control.

　　Personally, I think that the new four modernizations of automobiles, especially the intellectualization, cannot be completed by the automobile practitioners alone, just as Shanghai cannot become a financial center and logistics center solely by the Shanghai people. Autobots' main responsibility is to keep the bottom line and ensure that cars as a safe and reliable large equipment can be responsible to consumers. The real intelligence needs to be completed by integrating chip companies, AI experts, IT practitioners and other relevant industries, not just automobile practitioners.

　　At present, the number of vehicle-mounted chips has increased exponentially. We can classify them from several major domain controls (body, cabin, chassis, power and automatic driving) of automobiles, or analyze them based on two major categories of semiconductors (digital chips and analog chips). From these classifications, we can initially perceive the complexity of vehicle-mounted chips. It covers at least control class, drive class, power class, power class, simulation class, computing class, communication class, storage class, sensor class, and security class. Automobile has become the largest scene of chip application.

　　In this case, the semiconductor industry and the automobile industry are facing huge and complex challenges. Autobots need to identify and cooperate with high-quality chip companies to build mature and reliable solutions. For example, in the field of cockpit, the cockpit system contains core component chips such as MCU and SOC. At the same time, due to the diversity of functions and the close relationship with software, it needs to carry out collaborative development of multiple types of chips of software. At the same time, the on-board OS is also increasingly valued. With the support of basic software such as virtual machine and middleware, it is necessary to introduce the SOA framework to achieve rapid iteration of functions.

　　Practice of CAIC

　　So for Autobots, our work is more about how to do a good job of this system architecture, so that it can quickly adapt to different chips and quickly verify different chips.

　　To be specific, first of all, the first task is to select the right chip and make good use of it. In the past, Autobots mainly relied on the global Tier1 to provide mature solutions and replicate, mass produce and reduce costs of foreign solutions in China. However, there are not only foreign chip products on the market, but also domestic chip products. A large number of chips are launched in the Chinese market, and there is no plan for us to use for reference. This requires that the car owners must thoroughly understand the design and innovation of platform hardware, and do a good job in the four basic tasks of "selecting the right chip, designing platform hardware, developing software, and ensuring functional safety and information security".

　　The second work is systematization, which is mainly realized by module packaging. In this process, communication module, computing module, power module and storage module are packaged and deployed. With the basic software, it can greatly reduce the development cost, cycle and risk of the controller

　　The third work is IP cooperation: transplant the unique IP of the automobile industry into the chip. This kind of IP can be related to the basic software, information and algorithm framework. Further optimize the system to achieve better integration of software and hardware

　　The fourth work is design-level cooperation: combine the understanding of the future development trend of the Autobot with the design capabilities of the chip company, and customize special functions based on the central computing platform and functional security, information security and other aspects. The above four points are the work we need to complete.

　　From the perspective of vehicle architecture: currently, it is divided into three major domain controls - intelligent control, intelligent driving and intelligent cabin platform; The whole layer is a sensing and mechanical platform; On top of it are various computing power and interface platforms (completed by chip companies), and on top of it is the work to be done by the auto people and software people: organically combine the on-board, intelligent driving and vehicle control operating system with the chip, and provide computing power to the upper application. On the top, it is similar to the AUTOSAR architecture: including communication protocol stack, digital link, SOA architecture, and other contents. The top layer is the application layer.

　　Vehicle enterprises are more involved in the work of vehicle OS layer, vehicle application layer and cloud platform, while the physical architecture and controller layer are completed by the partners of chip companies or some solution companies.

　　In practice, we took the lead in cooperating with Centrino to develop and solve 126 system stability problems such as black screen ripple, memory stampede, memory leak, media playback, and improve 27 basic functions such as USB, file system, and upgrade. And did various verification work before getting on the train

　　The platform of Centrino can meet the requirements of entry-level cockpit and domain control. Of course, the domestic demand now lies in how to build a powerful platform and how to benchmark Qualcomm 8155 chip? My personal understanding is that it is unreasonable for the current level of car chips to directly benchmark Qualcomm's chip platform, because the initial investment in the chip industry is very large, especially the large computing power SoC and high process chips. The initial investment will be around 300 million dollars, while the current sales level of car chips cannot support its sustainable development and product iteration.

　　So we have cooperated with Zhanrui to launch a platform, which can promote the standardization of consumer-grade chip cars, analyze and solve the problems of chip heat dissipation, RF, etc. Based on Zhanrui's mobile phone baseline code reconstruction, simplify the system, adapt to the automotive framework on Android 13, improve and supplement the functions, and code reconstruction and optimization are more applicable to vehicle scenarios.

　　The next step plan of CAIC

　　At present, the platform we cooperate with Centrino has moved towards mass production. Zhanrui platform is currently being jointly developed with customers. It is expected to be mass production this year. We want to be a good linker between the chip industry chain and the automobile industry chain, and connect the two ecosystems.

　　First of all, we will cooperate with the chip company in depth. First of all, we will jointly create a good design and test plan. Through this plan, the chip can meet the requirements of the car specification and can get on the car. Second, we should jointly build a module of vehicle standardization, modularize the underlying software and other basic service functions, and reduce costs. Third, align the needs of the automotive industry with those of chip companies, such as the need for multi-screen interaction in the cockpit field, the need for virtualization, and the need for the underlying GPU; To carry out modular development, to achieve functional security and information security, what are the requirements for chips; What kind of chips are needed for the next generation of car models, and so on.

　　The core goal of our next step is to build a complete system capability of independent vehicle planning power chip, enable the main engine factory to realize the strategy of independent control+partial leading and then comprehensive leading, and in business, take demand definition, resource integration and ecological construction as the core, drive industry resources and gradually complete the mission; In terms of products, (SOC+MCU) integrated chip, power chip and sensor chip businesses are working together; In terms of results, through customization, vehicle planning and ecological integration, "two modernizations and one integration", a product IP with combined competitiveness has been formed.

　　In addition, CAIC Chuangzhi can also provide the ability of generalized operating system. We have built our own software platform for cockpit, intelligent driving and vehicle control, and have the modular development capability of the underlying drive, which can quickly connect the chip with external devices. Together with our partners, we have strengthened the capability of vehicle planning test, which can verify whether the chip meets the requirements of vehicle planning at an early stage, rather than waiting for the problem to be found after getting on the vehicle.

　　Finally, our vision is to cooperate with partners in the industry, especially in the chip industry, to be the leader of technological innovation, the practitioner of industrial incubation, the driver of data services, and the guardian of supply chain security.

　　(The above content is from the keynote speech of "Looking at Chips from the Perspective of Tier1" delivered by Ji Donghui, senior director of CAIC Chuangzhi, at the 2023 Second Automobile Chip Industry Conference hosted by Geshi Automobile on February 21, 2023.)