Difficult automotive chips require more powerful chip IP

In the past, an engine and fuel constituted a car.

Now, motors and chips form a "smart" car.

According to AutoHeart, a smart car today will be equipped with 1,000-2,000 main control chips , which is more than twice that of a traditional fuel vehicle.

Chips are like the bricks and tiles that build a smart car, especially on the user experience side. The experience brought by the chip starts before you get in the car: the vehicle starts without a key, and the small  MCU in the door handle  determines the door response. Speed; after entering the car, your fingers swipe across the large central control screen, testing the computing power of the cockpit chip .

The car's central control screen has changed from a small screen to a large screen, and the instrument panel has changed from pointers to a HUD. Chips are determining the response and perception capabilities of smart cockpits, smart driving , and many in-car hardware .

Automobile chips are everywhere. When tracing the birth of an automobile chip, the most easily overlooked aspect is the chip IP design process.

Chip IP refers to verified and reusable chip function modules.

It can be understood that IP design provides the most core core for the birth of a chip, and the IP of different components is combined to form a complete chip layout.

If the chip is the blood of a smart car, then the chip IP design is hematopoietic stem cells.

Recently, at Arm Technology’s Intelligent IoT Ecosystem Seminar, Deng Zhiwei, Senior Marketing Director of the Asia Pacific Region of Arm’s Automotive Division, made a judgment at the seminar:

As the functions implemented by cars become more complex and there are more and more sensors , the real-time nature and dependence between chips and cars will become stronger and stronger.

How is a car chip made? It is foreseeable that the ecological combination of chip IP manufacturers and OEMs, chip manufacturers, and software algorithm manufacturers will affect the smart car landscape.

In this regard, Automobile Heart had an in-depth exchange with Zhao Yongchao, head of intelligent IoT and automotive business lines of Anmou Technology, and Wang Lu, product marketing director of Jiefa Technology.

01. Difficult automotive chips to crack, taking on the Arm ecosystem to solve the problem

The "New Four Modernizations" and "Software-Defined Cars" have brought about earth-shaking changes to the automotive industry, and automotive chips have become a cake that no chip manufacturer can ignore.

It can be seen that many chip manufacturers that once focused on security and mobile phones have begun to get involved in automotive chips. At the same time, chip manufacturers that have been deeply involved in the automotive field for a long time have also begun to develop cockpit driving chips and autonomous driving chips with higher computing power.

Since its establishment, Arm has been serving traditional car companies with chip IP design. 30 years later, when the Chinese market has become the main battlefield for smart cars, Arm is joining hands with ARM Technology to gradually lead the marathon in China's smart car industry.

A set of data from UBS shows that China's autonomous driving OEMs will account for 17% of the world's total in 2022, and are expected to account for 33% in 2030.

The potential of China's smart cars has been exposed. According to Automobile News, half of ARM Technology's new customers in the first half of this year came from the automotive chip field.

Automotive chips are a tough nut to crack.

Automotive chips must first pass quality and speed tests. Compared with the 2-5 years of service life of ordinary consumer-grade chips, the service life of automotive chips must be at least ten years. Therefore, the process control of automotive chips is very different from that of consumer-grade chips and is very strict.

According to Wang Lu, in automotive chip manufacturing, when imported from the front end, it must be developed completely in accordance with the automotive process. At the same time, it must also meet the automotive regulatory requirements of professional certification standards such as automotive functional safety and information security.

Specifically, in addition to complying with the AEC-Q100 series standards, automotive chips must also meet the requirements of the automotive functional safety level (ASIL). The levels range from  ASIL-D  to ASIL-A. The functional safety of the chip also ranges from high to low. .

For example, airbags, power steering systems and other related automotive chips will require ASIL-D, while parts such as body headlights will require ASIL-B.

If you trace the design and development of automotive chips, you will find that automotive chips must also ensure that "quick work can also produce detailed work."

"The strict requirements of automotive regulations will also be pre-installed in the chip IP design." According to Zhao Yongchao, chip design must take at least an eight-year cycle to figure out the changes in the industry, and how to achieve IP products in the long-term dimension. Responding to the product needs of chip manufacturers and OEMs is no small challenge.

In other words, the long product life cycle puts forward higher requirements for upstream chip design manufacturers - chip IP manufacturers must be able to provide long-term technical support, stable supply time and product iteration.

Arm Technology, which holds Arm IP in its left hand and self-developed IP in its right hand, is constantly building a complete and stable product library for automotive chip manufacturers.

On the one hand, Arm Technology, as the only channel for Arm IP to enter the Chinese market, provides complete Arm ecosystem support for automotive chip manufacturers.

On the other hand, because it is rooted in China, Arm Technology can discover and understand domestic customer needs in a more timely and deeper manner, and has natural advantages in providing highly customized services, including "Zhouyi" NPU, "Xingchen" CPU The four self-developed product lines, including "Shanhai" SPU and "Linglong" VPU, complement Arm IP and provide customized solutions and services for emerging markets such as automobiles, data center infrastructure, and smart Internet of Things .

At present, automotive chips are still an incremental market with differentiated competition. The Qianzhan Industry Research Institute estimates that China’s demand for automotive chips has reached 19.63 billion units since 2020, and has maintained rapid growth in the following two years.

Faced with the increasing demand, ARM Technology and Arm are like two puzzle pieces with their own strengths put together to help domestic automotive chip manufacturers form advantages and accelerate their product innovation and implementation.

02. The aggressive central integration architecture requires more powerful chip IP

The prosperity of automobile chips is the inevitable result of automobiles moving towards central computing architecture.

According to Wang Lu and Zhao Yongchao, two "veterans" in the industry who have been working hard for many years, the evolution of automotive chips can also be divided into three eras as the decentralized electronic and electrical architecture moves toward a central computing architecture.

The first era: In the traditional distributed electronic and electrical architecture, chips have changed from few to many, and quality requirements have been relaxed.

During this period, automotive software and hardware were separated, communication interfaces between services were standardized, and functions were not dependent on the platform. The total number of large and small  ECUs  can reach hundreds, and the number of MCUs responsible for regulating and integrating the functions of each ECU is also increasing, resulting in the increase in the number of automotive chips.

The second era: Domain controller electronic and electrical architecture, chips tend to stabilize, and computing power requirements increase.

By integrating separate ECUs with similar functions into the processor hardware platform, the number of MCUs is further reduced, but the demand for chip integration capabilities and computing power is further increased.

The current stage of smart cars is the era of domain controllers. In the past two years, the integration of parking and cabin, and the integration of cabin and driving have become new trends. It pays attention to the reuse of chip computing power, and the domain master control of chassis, power transmission system and body comfort electronic system The computing power requirement of the processor has reached about 10000DMIPS-15000DMIPS.

The third era: Central computing institutions require performance, computing power, and security from chips.

During this period, the automotive EE architecture will be further simplified, and  SOA-  based design open software platforms will be introduced to achieve software and hardware decoupling. However, it will also impose higher performance, security level and integration requirements on automotive SoC chips.

Zhao Yongchao has visited more than 20 domestic mainframe manufacturers many times. He found that although each mainframe manufacturer is paying attention to domain control, the functional definitions of domain control are different. This is not friendly to chip manufacturers. In customized Under demand, the chip must conform to the system architecture configuration and the hardware must be converted into a unified software environment.

In this context, further binding to the industrial chain has become a new trend in the industry.

Many industry insiders have expressed to Automotive Heart from different angles that future industrial competition is actually ecological competition. Only by connecting chip manufacturers and sensing hardware manufacturers can a competitive ecosystem be formed.

The implication is that cooperation and fighting are indispensable.

ARM Technology's automotive chip cooperation battle is being opened up at two levels. On the one hand, it is to ensure the stability of chip IP supply, and on the other hand, it is the creation of an ecosystem.