Snapdragon 8155 "successor" released, will chips dominate car replacement in the future?

In the era of software-defined cars, the automotive industry is gradually being penetrated by "Moore's Law".

Moore's Law refers to: When the price remains unchanged, the number of transistors on a chip will double approximately every 18-24 months, that is, the price remains unchanged and the performance doubles. This law reveals the speed of upgrading and iteration of electronic products. quick.

In smart electric vehicles, as the three core components are replaced by electronic architecture, Moore's Law has also been clearly reflected, and may even directly dominate vehicle replacement.

Snapdragon 8155 is about to become a thing of the past

In the past two years, everyone has known about the Snapdragon 8155 cockpit chip, and nearly a hundred new cars have been equipped with it. Among these models are new energy vehicles and fuel vehicles. Although they have different power forms and different product positionings, they all have A common feature is that they focus on intelligent experience.

Snapdragon 8155 is the core of all this. If a car does not have Snapdragon 8155 today, it may not be worthy of talking about intelligence.

However, with the advent of Moore's Law, Snapdragon 8155 will also enter the stage of history. Of course, there will be new roles to take over.

Just recently, Qualcomm released its fourth-generation cockpit chip platform and also announced the "successor" of Snapdragon 8155, Snapdragon 8295. Before discussing this brand-new chip, we need to first review the evolution of Qualcomm’s cockpit chip platform.

In 2014, Qualcomm released the Snapdragon 602A, using a 28nm process technology, which was Qualcomm's initial attempt at the automotive end; in 2016, the Snapdragon 820A was released, using a 14nm process, and the Snapdragon automotive chip was gradually understood by consumers; in 2019 In 2019, Qualcomm released the third-generation cockpit chip, also known as Snapdragon 8155. Its process has been upgraded to 7nm, which is the "standard configuration" of today's smart cars.

Ten years, four iterations, each based on a new process technology. If you happen to understand the evolution of Qualcomm mobile chips, you will find that this update rhythm is strongly related to the replacement of Qualcomm mobile phone chips. Yes, Qualcomm's cockpit chips and mobile chips are indeed based on the same architecture.

Specifically, Qualcomm will first verify new functions and technologies on mobile phone chips, and then transfer them to cockpit chips.

In other words, Qualcomm's chips for car cockpits can be first verified in the mature mobile market and then used in cockpits. This makes Qualcomm's cockpit chips better than other manufacturers in terms of research and development costs, iteration speed and technology maturity. It is an incomparable advantage, so there was a grand occasion when all the staff held high the Snapdragon 8155.

Now, let’s talk about the newly released Snapdragon 8295. Different from the previous three generations, its design blueprint is not a mobile phone chip, but Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8cx Gen3 for notebook terminals. In terms of process technology, it is different from the 2021 Snapdragon 8295. Snapdragon 888 is a product of the same generation, but its characteristics for notebook terminals determine that its performance has directly jumped up several dimensions, just like the A14 chip on the iPhone 12 and the M1 chip on the Mac.

With this concept in mind, let’s look at Qualcomm’s official introduction. The AI ​​computing power of Snapdragon 8295 has been increased to 30TOPS. For comparison, Snapdragon 8155 is 4TOPS, and the Kirin 990A used in Huawei Hongmeng cars is 3.5TOPS.

In terms of GPU performance, which is more important to the cockpit chip, compared to the Snapdragon 8155, the overall GPU performance of the Snapdragon 8295 is improved by 2 times and the 3D rendering performance is improved by 3 times. In addition, it also adds support for electronic rearview mirrors and machine learning vision (rear view). (location, surround view), passenger monitoring and information security functions, one chip can carry 11 screens.

If nothing else, soon various car companies will spare no effort to promote the Snapdragon 8295.

Which car companies will use Snapdragon 8295?

According to the available information, Jidu ROBO-01 is the first model to announce the launch of Snapdragon 8295. However, judging from Jidu’s current car-building progress, there is a high probability that it will be a “PPT launch”, and relatively reliable ones include Lideal, Leipao and Xiaomi.

Ideal said at a media communication meeting in March this year that it will release a new car equipped with Snapdragon 8295 in the fourth quarter, which is the first pure electric model W01. In addition, the L series models will also support upgrades to Snapdragon 8295; Leappo announced The mid-to-large SUV Leapbo B11 released in the second half of the year will be equipped with Snapdragon 8295; as a die-hard Qualcomm customer, Xiaomi will naturally not miss the first car in 2024.

Jidu may know best what improvements the Snapdragon 8295 will bring to the smart cockpit after it is put into the car. Although their ROBO-01 is difficult to produce, it is undeniable that Jidu’s technical team has a very keen understanding of intelligence. sense of smell.

It can be seen from Jidu ROBO-01 that currently Snapdragon 8295 has two capabilities that are relatively clear. The first is in-car voice interaction. Thanks to the improvement in computing power, millisecond-level full offline voice interaction can be achieved.

Another point is that in terms of smart driving, also with the support of high computing power, the Snapdragon 8295 can be used as an independent and redundant backup system. When the assisted driving system fails in extreme circumstances, the smart cabin can immediately take over to ensure safety.

In addition, Snapdragon 8295's support for the number of screens and large memory not only provides more possibilities for cockpit interaction and entertainment systems, but can also meet some models with high computing power requirements.

For example, when the Ideal L9 was released, in order to realize the five-screen interaction scenario, it had to use two Snapdragon 8155 chips, because the Snapdragon 8155 only supports up to 12GB of memory and 4 screens, which cannot meet the computing power needs. Now, one A Snapdragon 8295 is enough to handle it, and is obviously a more efficient and economical choice.

It is worth noting that although there are not many car companies currently announcing the use of Snapdragon 8295, they are almost all new power car companies, and more car companies are in a wait-and-see state. At this point, the smart electric vehicle industry and the mobile phone industry A sharp contrast.

Also when Qualcomm's flagship chip platform is released, all major mobile phone manufacturers, without exception, will support Qualcomm and announce that their products will be the first batch to be equipped with Qualcomm chips. However, in the field of smart electric vehicles, we have only seen Jidu and Zeromo. Promoting it hard.

The reason behind this is that on the one hand, the priority of intelligent experience is relatively low at present. If it is not the main selling point, manufacturers do not need to hype it.

But the more important reason may be that there are not many traditional car companies that are committed to new technologies, and their demand for new hardware is relatively low. In their eyes, the "three major components" are still the most important factors in determining a car, and "performance The excess costs brought about by "excess" are unbearable for traditional car companies that value profit margins.

But anyone familiar with consumer electronics knows that "excess hardware" or "excess performance" is actually a false proposition, because the continuous advancement of software will eventually eat up all hardware performance.

At this point, new car companies that pay more attention to technology have a clearer view. Li Xiang once talked about the product strategy of Li Auto’s flagship model at the beginning of the year. He said, “The release and delivery time of the flagship product depends on some of the most critical factors. Technology is bound.

Sometimes our products are delayed mainly to incorporate the most advanced technology. For example, Qualcomm's 8295 chip will undergo an important upgrade at the end of this year. The ideal product is closely related to the development progress of Qualcomm 8295 chip, development strategy, and the progress of the entire software release.

We can't release a flagship product that's powered by a previous-generation chip that's entering the end of its product lifecycle. This is actually very uncomfortable for us. "

Will chips dominate car replacement?

As Li Xiang said, product release nodes are bound to some key technologies, which is very consistent with the iterative characteristics of consumer electronics products.

In the automotive field, in the past, these key technologies referred to the three major components of the engine, gearbox, and chassis, but now they are being replaced by various electronic components. This may be the true meaning of software-defined cars. To be more precise, , it is semiconductors and software that together define cars.

As the three major parts are replaced by various electronic components, cars will naturally not escape the law of "Moore's Law". Further understanding, subsequent car replacements may be like mobile phones and computers, where the iteration of core chips is the most important One of the reference items, and under this trend, the iteration speed of automobiles will become faster and faster, and the cost will become lower and lower.

At this year’s 100-person Electric Vehicle Forum, Zhu Jiangming, CEO of Leapao, who was born in consumer electronics, put forward a similar point of view—two years is the update rhythm for smart electric vehicles.