GDDR6 is customized on demand. Micron plans to deploy L4/L5 autonomous driving

"Autonomous driving is a very hot topic at present. As a supplier of memory devices, what can we do in L4 and L5 autonomous driving?"

Mr. Ma Liewei, Business Development Manager of Micron Semiconductor Sales (Shanghai) Co., Ltd., delivered a speech on the theme of "High-performance memory makes L4/L5 autonomous driving possible" at the third "Automotive Day Summit Forum" of the Munich Shanghai Electronics Show.

Long-term supply strategy

"As a member of the entire automotive industry, Micron has been engaged in the automotive electronics industry for more than 25 years. We have cooperated with many companies and have a dedicated automotive quality team and dedicated automotive products."

"In terms of production services, we have some special objectives specifically for the automotive market, such as a long-term supply strategy. In fact, the main application environment of memory is the mobile phone and computer markets, and the update and replacement of these two markets is very fast. We also respond to customer needs and have a very fast update and replacement speed. However, the automotive industry requires long-term supply, which must be guaranteed for at least 10 years from the beginning of supply. In this way, the R&D cycle is 2 to 3 years, and the production cycle is 5 to 7 years, which is about 10 years in total."

Unprecedented capacity requirements

Mr. Ma Liewei emphasized that Micron is at the forefront of the automotive industry, which is why he gave a keynote speech titled "High-performance memory makes L4/L5 autonomous driving possible." Regarding the trend of autonomous driving in terms of memory, Mr. Ma Liewei talked about the following points.

"First of all, autonomous driving, especially AI-based autonomous driving, requires much more capacity than before, which may reach 50 to 100 Tflops, which is still relatively basic. As for DRAM, the demand for algorithms and high-definition maps has greatly increased the bandwidth requirements. As a supplier, we will transform our products to meet the requirements of higher security levels. Another important aspect is the requirements for black boxes, which have very high requirements for capacity, speed, and lifespan, which is a big challenge for us."

"For example, more cameras and radars are now used. The application of these parameters requires more and more bandwidth and capacity. Because the number of radars is increasing, the number of objects that need to be identified is increasing, and the response speed is also increasing, so the bandwidth requirements will increase."

"Memory suppliers all know that the current requirement is nanometer-level, which is a great challenge to our memory. Finally, there is the temperature requirement. For ADAS applications, the temperature requirement is no longer just 85°C, but 105°C, 125°C or even higher."

Customized GDDR6 solutions

Micron can provide different solutions for the needs of different car manufacturers. Mr. Ma Liewei continued to introduce: "The LPDDR4 currently on the market cannot meet the needs of the middle level from L3 to L4. So we have specially developed a product - GDDR6, which has a speed three times that of LPDDR4. If a main chip is equipped with 4 GDDR6, it can reach a transmission rate of 224GB per second, which can complete the data transmission between L3 and L4. If you need higher data, such as L4 and L5, you need to carry more GDDR6. GDDR6 is currently the memory that can best meet the needs of future L4 and L5."

Micron also has different solutions for distributed and centralized architectures. "For a typical distributed architecture, it should be able to complete an architecture above L3. For us, the data transmission rate required by this ASIC is 34GB per second, which may require two LPDDR4 chips, and then go together through the data line, which may require more transmission rate. GDDR5 is not enough, so we need to use GDDR6. With more GDDR6 chips, we can achieve a complete L5 or L4 level of data transmission rate."

At the end of his speech, Mr. Ma Liewei made three points in summary: "First, as a company that has served the automotive industry for 28 years, Micron is a company worthy of cooperation and trust, because we have cooperation in the entire ecological chain, from upstream car manufacturers to downstream main chip companies."

"Second, we believe that driverless cars will be a topic that will drive the development of the entire automotive industry in the future. The recognition of some algorithms will greatly increase the requirements for memory bandwidth, and our products, such as GDDPR6, are already ahead of mobile phones."

"Finally, our GDDR6 already provides the memory bandwidth requirements for future L4 and L5 autonomous driving. Although DDR3 or LPDDPR4 are still the mainstream camera solution options, we believe that we will see more challenging cameras in the future."