Automotive chip company inventory: NXP’s automotive business has grown at an alarming rate

The recent problems in the chip industry are still core issues. From the perspective of automobiles, apart from Infineon, we need to continue to track the situation of NXP.

NXP's 2022 full-year revenue was US$13.21 billion, a year-on-year increase of 19.4%; net profit was US$2.833 billion, a year-on-year increase of 48.6%.

The annual revenue of the automotive field was US$6.88 billion, a year-on-year increase of 25%, which reflects the increase in the growth of automotive chips compared with the mobile phone field; with the growth of global electrified vehicle xEV sales, the purchasing strategy of car companies for automotive chips has changed to " Stock up more.”

Judging from historical data, NXP's automotive chip business has suddenly climbed from 3.83 billion in 2020 to 6.88 billion in 2022. This increase is indeed amazing.

▲Figure 1. NXP’s situation in the past few years

In the automotive sector, the main driving forces for accelerated growth include:

77GHz radar (28nm RF CMOS radar single-chip IC series).

Solutions for electrification (battery management solutions, inverter control and other xEV control processors).

About S32 domain and regional processors under EE architecture.

▲Figure 2. NXP’s sources of growth momentum

Main layout in the automotive field

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• electrification business

In automotive electrification applications, NXP covers many chip solutions, including motor control, battery management systems and DC/DC converters. From a product perspective, it includes MCU microprocessors, analog front-ends, gate drivers, and safe power management , vehicle networks and sensors, etc. Of course, we are most familiar with the classic case of AFE. The entry through AFE has broken the original gap between ADI (including the acquired Linear) and TI, and achieved good entry through multi-channel acquisition chips.

Due to the obvious all-in-one trend in the electrification field, NXP's original BMS product line in the MCU field can directly collide with Infineon's power MCUs.

▲Figure 3. NXP’s electrification business

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• Control and processing chips

From a single function-oriented MCU to a composite MCU with a next-generation EE architecture, NXP's main consideration is to focus on communication. On the one hand, it strengthens communication capabilities and on the other hand, it strengthens processing capabilities.

On the Zonal node, it mainly revolves around S32K3, with storage ranging from 512KB to 8MB flash memory, 4 Arm Cortex M7 cores (clocked up to 320MHz), and single-core, dual-core, triple-core and lock-step cores that support ASIL B/D safety applications. configuration.

On the Zongal module, the S32G3 automotive network processor includes ASIL D-level security, high-performance real-time and application processing, and network acceleration functions.

Overall, the trend here is to increase the unit price + reduce the quantity, and realize its own value around software centralization.

▲Figure 4. Different regional architecture chips

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• Sense the radar chip inside

In terms of radar, through the design direction of the radar head and the highly integrated 77GHz radar smart transceiver SoC, the application of car companies and tier 1 can be realized. This, also launched at CES 2023, is equipped with four high-performance transmitters, four receivers, a multi-core radar processor with hardware accelerators, and Gigabit Ethernet communication interfaces and memory.

Of course, everyone still has many questions about the value of ordinary millimeter waves and 4D millimeter waves in car sensing systems.

▲Figure 5. NXP radar chip

Automotive chip competition and product line adjustments

Some time ago, we were analyzing the impact of changing the vehicle's low-voltage system from 12V to 48V. In fact, whether it is traditional car companies tossing Zonal or Tesla tossing 48V, it will bring about major adjustments to the product layout of traditional automotive chips.

Input circuit: With more and more single-chip nodes, there will be very few real input circuits on Zonal in the future.

Output circuit: Between the ECU and the actuator, after passing through the output loop, through the amplification effect of the MOS tube, with the 48V load voltage, the entire drive current is also decreasing. It is conceivable that the needs of this area are also changing.

Microprocessor (MCU): With the cheapening of computing cores, there are simple computing cores on the driver. We see that all MCU manufacturers are taking the high-end route, expanding memory with multiple cores, and supporting high functional security levels, allowing You can put all kinds of functions into it.

Power circuit: Convert from 12V to the required voltage, where it needs to be matched to 48V.

▲Figure 6. Chip changes in automotive ECU

Summary: In my personal judgment, in terms of automotive chips, the category matrices of various original established chip companies will also switch from classic matrices to the latest products as MCUs are reduced and transformed. There are still great opportunities here. Of course, the largest computing category is now taken away by Qualcomm and Nvidia. It seems that no matter NXP, Infineon, ST and Renesas, they all clearly see that there are some things that they cannot participate in.