According to Taiwanese media citing supply chain sources, some car manufacturers are considering adopting more consumer or commercial grade chips to replace the previously used automotive grade chips due to cost considerations.

　　Car grade chips are different from consumer electronics chips, as they have higher requirements for reliability, safety, and service life.

　　For example, the temperature range inside the engine compartment is about -40 ° C to 150 ° C, so the operating temperature of automotive grade chips often meets this range. In contrast, the operating temperature range of consumer electronics chips is approximately 0 ° C to 70 ° C. Furthermore, during the driving process of the vehicle, it will encounter a lot of vibrations and impacts, and the vehicle grade chip needs to ensure stable operation even in harsh working environments.

　　Image source: GEP

　　In addition, the lifecycle of automotive products is much higher than that of consumer electronics products. Generally speaking, the lifecycle of automotive grade chips is required to be 10 or even 15 years, while the supply cycle is longer. In such a situation, how to maintain the consistency and reliability of the chip is the first issue to consider for automotive grade chips.

　　Moreover, the pursuit of safety for automotive grade chips is far higher than that of consumer products. If the mobile phone chip malfunctions, it can be shut down and restarted, but if the car grade chip crashes, it may cause serious safety accidents. Therefore, in the design of automotive chips, functional safety should be placed at the beginning of the architecture design and become an extremely important component of automotive chips. Independent safety island design should be adopted, including the production process of automotive chips, to ensure the functional safety of automotive chips.

　　And this supply chain rumor that some car manufacturers are considering increasing the use of consumer grade or commercial grade chips also shows that there is still room for price drops in automotive grade chips at present. However, from a safety perspective, replacing the DDI driver chips used in car entertainment systems and displays with non compliant chips is also feasible as they will not affect driving safety.

　　This article is reprinted from Gaishi Automotive Information Network