After the emergence of Tesla, which leads the disruptive innovation in the automobile industry, innovation and experience have become the key words of new energy intelligent networked vehicles. Because software can determine the function and function can determine the experience, software definition of cars has also become a trend. However, the improvement of software needs to be accompanied by the transformation of car shape and architecture. In other words, any software needs to run on the chip. From this perspective, The application requirements of car specification chips will be more extensive in the future of software definition of cars.

　　On February 21, 2023, Wang Qiang, senior director of FAW Intelligent Network Research Institute, said at the 2023 Second Automobile Chip Industry Conference hosted by Geshi Automobile, that at present, the number of on-board semiconductors is increasing, but this growth is not endless. In the future, the balance point between performance requirements and manufacturing process will be reached in the process of integration, so as to realize cost reduction.

　　Wang Qiang, Senior Director of China FAW Intelligent Network Institute

　　The following is the arrangement of the speech content:

　　Development trend of automobile industry under the new four modernizations

　　Under the new "four modernizations" trend, new energy intelligent networked vehicles have developed rapidly, and the rate of electric, intelligent and networked equipment has increased rapidly. I believe that the pace of development of new energy has far exceeded expectations, and in 2022, it ushered in a blowout development period, with the penetration rate reaching ahead of schedule and exceeding 25%.

　　At the same time, the country has given high attention and policy support to the new energy vehicle industry. As a field of industrial technology concentration, the new energy vehicle has become one of the national strategic emerging industries. In this context, China FAW, as the leading vehicle manufacturer in China, released the global strategy of Hongqi brand new energy vehicles on January 8. FAW will further improve the overall brand structure of Hongqi brand "big family" and continue to promote the transformation and market expansion of new energy.

　　In fact, the electrification in the new four modernizations can promote the intelligent networking. Compared with traditional fuel vehicles, pure electric vehicles are easier to realize intelligent driving and Internet connection functions, because the overall control system of pure electric vehicles is highly integrated and controllable, and the vehicle factory has more independent algorithms in this field. Intelligent networking can not only improve driving safety, convenience and comfort, but also realize the interconnection between the vehicle and the external environment and other devices.

　　The cockpit is also an important area covered by networking. With the gradual increase of commuting time in big cities, vehicles have become the third living space, where people need to engage in entertainment, learning, social networking and even office activities, which adds a lot of intelligent configuration requirements for the cockpit, including LCD meters, augmented reality, HUD display, various lighting effects, and so on. These configurations require the application and support of chips.

　　In addition to the new four modernizations, software-defined cars are also the trend. Tesla, as the leader of disruptive innovation, has spawned many excellent new force car brands in China. They have changed the shape and function of cars to a certain extent, making user experience the key to the competitiveness of finished vehicle products. In this process, software innovation plays an important role. Software not only determines the function and experience of the car, but also gradually increases the proportion of software in the whole system with the transformation of the car form.

　　Any software needs to run on the chip, which also means that the application range of the chip is wider.

　　Technical trend insight

　　To sum up, the opportunity for the automotive industry is mainly discussed in terms of the change of the overall market trend. Next, in terms of specific technology, we propose four changes: first, the transformation of the electronic and electrical architecture: from the distributed controller architecture with the central gateway as the core, the preliminary domain integration architecture, to the central computing+regional control architecture currently being implemented.

　　The architecture evolution is mainly aimed at the following problems: first, with the increase of vehicle functions, the number of controllers is also increasing; Second, the length of the harness is increasing gradually, which not only increases the cost and weight, but also affects the performance and power consumption of the vehicle. The adoption of the new architecture will help to solve the two problems mentioned above. For example, the harness of the most complex high-end model at present is more than 3.5 km, while the typical length of the Tesla harness can be less than 1.5 km, which is a very important difference.

　　Second, network communication is developing towards high bandwidth, low latency, scalability and high security. In the past, it was mainly based on terabyte communication. With the rapid growth of the data collected and processed by the intelligent connected vehicle, some new communication modes and protocol standards need to be introduced in the future, including Ethernet, PCIe point-to-point two-way communication, etc.

　　Third, the form of hardware is developing towards high performance and high integration. In the past, the controller has the characteristics of single core, high reliability, low power and high precision closed-loop current control. In the future, the controller with multi-core isomerism and high performance computing and the control of high power power motor will be introduced.

　　Third, the operating system has entered the stage of coexistence and centralized deployment. Due to the introduction of heterogeneous chips and the existence of multiple computing cores, the basic software has also changed. A single operating system cannot allocate the vehicle resources. It is necessary to introduce a hypervisor virtual machine, run multiple operating system cores on it, and manage different domain controllers such as intelligent driving, intelligent cockpit, and vehicle control. Therefore, it is necessary to consider the coexistence and centralized deployment of multiple types of operating systems.

　　Among the above technological changes, the chip is actually the most critical variable. The chip's functional performance has a great impact on the realization and implementation of these technologies, and thus affects the product's performance and terminal experience.

　　Next, I mainly analyze the changes in chip demand from the perspective of technological change, and look forward to the future development trend.

　　Application status and development demand of chips

　　For traditional electric vehicles, the most complex controller is the engine and transmission, which are characterized by low computational power, low bandwidth and low speed, and mainly drive actuators such as valves and small motors. Secondly, with the introduction of intelligent networking technology, the automobile controller has undergone innovation and needs to evolve to the direction of high computing power, high bandwidth and high power. These all put forward higher requirements for the chip performance. At the same time, the development of these technologies has in turn promoted the progress of chip technology.

　　In addition, at present, smart cars adopt a central computing architecture, and realize various functions through three main domain controllers: intelligent driving, cockpit and vehicle control. These three controllers are responsible for tasks such as automatic driving, human-computer interaction and vehicle management. In the future, the domain controller architecture of automobiles will be further integrated and integrated at different levels: controller level, board level and chip level.

　　According to the market demand, vehicle controllers can be divided into two categories: cockpit and vehicle control are mainstream configurations, which are applicable to most mainstream configuration vehicles; High-level intelligent driving is a high-end configuration, which is only applicable to some cars. Therefore, we believe that the integration of cockpit and vehicle control, cabin and driving will become an important direction, and the multi-domain integration SoC chip will become the core of the future automobile and the largest value increment in the future.

　　Next, we will introduce two external factors that affect the development of chips. One is the supply factor. In the past two years, the car factory has caused a lot of losses due to lack of cores. The local government and the car factory have also greatly increased their attention to chip safety, and have taken some measures to ensure the stable supply of chips. The second external factor mainly refers to the restriction and suppression of China's chip industry by the United States and Europe, including the chip act, EDA restriction and high-performance GPU restriction. These measures are intended to split the supply chain cycle between China and the United States and Europe, and are also forcing China to develop its own chip industry. Therefore, we believe that China's auto chip industry needs to work together to establish a safe and reliable supply chain system relying on internal circulation and its own strength.

　　Of course, China's chip industry still faces three major problems. First, how to ensure stable supply in the short term? It can cooperate with international TOP5 in depth, and OEM can improve the chip management level; Second, domestic chips as a whole need to be mature. The United States has advantages in high-performance and cutting-edge chips. How can we narrow the gap? This requires improving the maturity of domestic automotive chips and improving the domestic chip industry chain in a whole range; Third, high-end chip resources are in short supply, and the market calls for domestic automobile chip advantage enterprises.

　　Demand and development direction of vehicle-level chips

　　Chips can be divided into three dimensions: application level, chip function, and whether the chip has software. Each dimension can be divided into multiple sub-categories. According to the application level, it can be divided into four categories: consumer level, industrial level, vehicle specification level and military level. Among them, the requirements of vehicle specification chip can be summarized by "two high, two long, and one low": high reliability, high security, long supply and storage cycle, and long verification cycle. The above points need to be realized at low cost.

　　Chips can be divided into three categories according to the availability of software: master chips, peripheral chips, and discrete devices. The number of discrete devices is very large, but their value is very low. They are basic components in the semiconductor category; The chip with software is the master chip, which can be divided into two categories: computing and control, involving the development environment, development tools and the whole ecosystem; The chips without software are peripheral chips, with a large number, but less concentrated value.

　　Next, look at the value of the single chip. With the change of the model from the low end to the high end, the number of controllers gradually increases, and the number of chips also increases, up to more than 800. At present, the number of single car chips for mainstream models is between 400-500, and the value of single car chips is also increasing. For example, the terminal model is about 8000 yuan, and the high-end model is about 14000 yuan.

　　Finally, the future trend and development direction of the car-gauge chip industry are predicted. First, with the progress of technology, the number and integration of car-gauge chips will show certain changes; Second, with the growth of market demand, the manufacturing process and cost-effectiveness of car-gauge chips will reach a certain balance.

　　From the technical level, the number and integration of on-board chips are affected by many factors. On the one hand, with the advancement of intelligence, networking, digitization and other trends, the functions of cars are increasing, and more chips need to be loaded. On the other hand, the optimization and innovation of hardware system structure put forward higher requirements for chip size, power consumption and compatibility, which prompted chip design to be more concise, efficient and unified, which promoted the application of SoC system-level chips.

　　Therefore, in the process of technology development, the growth of the number of chips is not endless, but will be adjusted and balanced according to different scenarios and application needs; In the same way, integration is not endless. In the process of development, "one increase and one decrease" will eventually reach a balance. Hardware will always be integrated, and chips will also be integrated. However, in the process of integration, the first advanced process will generate a value premium, gradually reduce costs at a node of advanced process, and finally reach a balance.

　　From the perspective of the market, the manufacturing process and cost-effectiveness of chips are also affected by many factors. On the one hand, the improvement of the semiconductor industry chain and the intensification of competition have put forward higher requirements for chip quality, speed, stability and other aspects, which urge chip manufacturing to adopt more advanced, precise and standardized process flow, and can enjoy the value premium of the corresponding process nodes.

　　On the other hand, under the influence of factors such as increased market demand and shortened product life cycle, the pressure of cost reduction has gradually increased, and in some areas has reached or approached the technical limit (such as traditional automobile MCU), which has prompted chip manufacturing to expand in some process nodes and reduce unit costs. Therefore, in the process of market development, "advanced and cheap" is not mutually exclusive or conflicting, but can be selected and balanced according to different product types and market stages.

　　In the current practical application of vehicles in production, the market of automotive chips is mainly concentrated in control, power supply and drive, which are the advantages of international giants. The automobile chip industry has shown a trend of polarization, with the top five enterprises accounting for most of the market share, while some other enterprises are prominent in some areas; With the development of the semiconductor industry, the domestic automotive chip industry will also go through a process of elimination and merger, so as to achieve industrial optimization.

　　Chip application practice

　　Finally, we will introduce the work we are doing. Our central domain control platform adopts the A/B dual-route development mode, and the main engine factory will promote the replacement process of some components, and go deep into the chip definition link, open up the technical path from chip demand, chip development to chip carrying verification, accelerate the process of chip mass production, combine the function with the contract chip integration, so that the complete vehicle factory can truly become a user-oriented experience The first person in charge of vehicle functions.

　　In addition, FAW strives to promote the construction of chip standards, standardize the classification of automobile chips, develop the standard system of automobile chips, and establish six core standards; Fully participate in the formulation of the national standard/industry standard for automobile chips, and actively contribute to the construction of chip standards. From the perspective of the industry, we hope that the standards formulated can ensure the stability and reliability of the chip; From the perspective of the enterprise, we are establishing a digital intelligent chip management system, aiming at optimizing the management mechanism: applying digital intelligent means to achieve chip penetration management, risk prediction and rapid response, and improving the supply chain risk control ability.

　　Finally, three points are summarized: First, in the new wave of technological and industrial revolution, Red Flag has evolved from a traditional automobile manufacturing enterprise to a high-tech enterprise that attaches equal importance to "vehicle manufacturing" and "technological innovation", and is committed to creating safe, reliable, green, intelligent, and extremely dreamy travel services for users. 2、 Hongqi is willing to open cooperation with chip companies, universities, parts enterprises and other partners to work together to build a new technology highland. 3、 Under the new international situation, Hongqi is willing to take on the responsibility of the industry, to achieve a safe and controllable auto chip industry chain, and to jointly create a new ecosystem of the energy intelligent networked automobile industry!

　　The above content is from the keynote speech "New challenges, new opportunities, the future of chip-driven cars" delivered by Wang Qiang, senior director of FAW Intelligent Network Research Institute of China, at the 2023 Second Automobile Chip Industry Conference hosted by Geshi Automobile on February 21, 2023.)