The vehicle storage market is booming-EEWORLD

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On-board storage has become the next market trend for smart cars.

"High-tech Intelligent Automobile" noticed that in recent years, major mainstream storage giants and domestic manufacturers have poured into the automotive memory chip track. Rough statistics show that in the domestic market alone, there are more than 20 manufacturers entering the vehicle storage track.

Behind this, as cars accelerate their transformation into intelligence, the amount of data generated by bicycle ADAS/AD sensors every day is showing explosive growth. L3 and above autonomous vehicles will generate approximately 4TB-20TB of data.

Obviously, the amount of data and calculations faced by smart cars is soaring, and "large-capacity cache and storage" will inevitably become a hard requirement.

In addition, it is important to mention that since 2022, the storage market has begun to enter a downward cycle, and many storage manufacturers have fallen into losses. At that time, the storage market demand generated by smart cars naturally became an important track for major storage manufacturers to create performance growth poles.

Against this background, a large number of mainstream storage giants, listed companies and domestic manufacturers have poured into the vehicle storage market.

Automobile storage "new blue ocean"

The car is rapidly evolving into a mobile data center.

According to relevant data, the average data stored in a car will be approximately 34GB in 2021, and it is expected that car storage will reach 483GB in 2026, a year-on-year increase of more than 13 times. In the future, with the gradual implementation of L3 and above autonomous vehicles, the storage capacity of single vehicles will increase to 4TB-20TB.

It can be seen that a huge automotive storage market demand is about to explode. Relevant data shows that the vehicle storage market will reach US$5.66 billion in 2021 and will grow to US$11.94 billion in 2025.

Gao Dongzi, Sales Director of Longsys Embedded Storage Division, said that from in-vehicle infotainment systems and cockpit systems to intelligent driving assistance systems, OTA software upgrade management systems, etc., smart cars have shown a growing demand for large-capacity and highly reliable storage products. Explosive growth trend.

And Yiwei is a company that has the ability to develop its own car-grade eMMC main control chip and can mass-produce car-grade eMMC. It has now launched a complete car-grade eMMC storage solution.

Luo Ting, marketing director of Deyiwei, said bluntly that driven by the new four modernizations of automobiles, the in-vehicle storage market contains strong growth momentum, and domestic in-vehicle storage chip manufacturers will usher in unprecedented development opportunities.

In the era of traditional fuel vehicles, due to the early start of overseas manufacturers, the long life cycle of automotive storage products, and the slower iteration pace of technology and model updates, most needs can be met once customer certification is passed. This has resulted in major overseas storage manufacturers such as Micron, Samsung, and Hynix always controlling the automotive storage market, while local Chinese manufacturers account for a negligible proportion.

But in the era of smart cars, China has become the world's largest automobile exporter, and has become the most important market leading the smart and electrified global automobile industry. "This provides a very good market opportunity for domestic storage manufacturers." Luo Ting said that in recent years, OEMs have increasingly demanded supply chain security, cost reduction and efficiency improvement, and the trend of localization of automotive memory chips has become very obvious. .

At the same time, China is promoting the localization process of automotive electronic components and is vigorously formulating relevant standards. For example, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology recently issued the "Guidelines for the Construction of the National Automotive Chip Standard System", proposing to formulate more than 30 key standards for automotive chips by 2025; and to formulate more than 70 automotive chip-related standards by 2030 to help the rapid development of my country's chip industry. develop.

In this way, with the comprehensive support of multiple favorable factors, China's local vehicle storage manufacturers have ushered in an unprecedented development window.

Shi Youqiang, marketing director of GigaDevice's innovative memory division, said that domestic suppliers of automotive-grade storage products can seize the growth opportunities in China's automotive market and actively cooperate with local car companies and local parts suppliers. Under the framework of China's automotive electronics standards, Define unique products with cost advantages and functional safety suitable for the Chinese market.

The "breakdown" of Chinese enterprises

Although domestic car-standard memory chips have ushered in an important window period, it is not easy to truly break out of the siege and enter the supply chain system of car manufacturers.

Shi Youqiang said that the market barriers for automotive-grade memory chips are relatively high. It takes at least three years for a automotive-grade memory chip to go from planning to mass production. The entire investment cycle is long and the technical requirements are high. It not only needs to pass AEC-Q100 and IATF16949 , ISO26262 and a series of vehicle regulatory certifications, it also needs to pass various stringent reliability tests before leaving the factory. In addition, long-term supply commitments, service support during the product life cycle, and consistency in product planning have all placed stringent demands on chip companies.

“While planning and laying out new products, how to further improve product quality and ensure the high reliability of memory products, so as to ensure that the goal of Zero Defect is achieved in automotive applications, has also become a huge challenge. This requires chip manufacturers to start from the design point of view. The quality concept must be improved in all aspects from production to service." Shi Youqiang said that passing the vehicle-level certification is only the first step. After entering the car factory introduction stage, each car factory will also combine its own products and production requirements. Chip suppliers provide different requirements. According to the corporate standards of some international car manufacturers, the entire certification process may take as long as 4-5 years.

Data shows that on-board storage mainly includes DRAM (DDR, LPDDR), NAND Flash (eMMC, UFS, etc.) and NOR FLASH, which is responsible for code storage. Among them, DRAM is an internal memory that directly exchanges data with the CPU. It has a fast processing speed and is mainly used in high memory bandwidth systems such as LCD instruments and autonomous driving. NAND Flash is mainly used in LCD instruments, driving recorders, autonomous driving and other large systems. Systems with high capacity storage requirements; NOR Flash is used for display systems, ADAS systems and other devices that require high startup speed.

According to "Gaogong Intelligent Automobile", in the past few years, more than 20 companies, including GigaDevice and Longsys, have continued to develop the vehicle storage market. At present, domestic companies have achieved important breakthroughs in the fields of automotive-grade DRAM and NOR FLASH. However, the overall localization rate of automotive memory chips is still relatively low, and there is still huge market space in the future.

For example, Longsys has two series of automotive-grade storage products, eMMC and UFS, both of which meet automotive-grade AEC-Q100 reliability standards and can meet the needs of various application scenarios of smart cars. At present, Longsys has entered the supply chain system of more than 20 domestic OEMs and has occupied a certain market size in the automotive grade memory market.

Gao Dongzi introduced that Longsys’ automotive-grade UFS2.1 has completed product verification on multiple automotive clients and is expected to begin mass production and shipment in 2024. The automotive-grade Grade2 UFS3.1 products can also provide CS For samples, the capacity will be increased to 128GB/256GB.

In the field of NOR FLASH, GigaDevice has been deeply involved in the field for many years and launched the automotive-grade GD25/55 SPINOR Flash that meets the AEC-Q100 standard, achieving 2M-2G capacity coverage. At the same time, GigaDevice can also provide GD5F SPI NAND Flash series products covering 1Gb-4Gb capacity. Currently, the two series of products have been widely used in smart cockpits, smart driving, smart network connections, new energy electric vehicles, large and small three-power systems, etc. , global cumulative shipments have reached 100 million.

DeYiWei's automotive-grade storage products have been applied in batches by Dongfeng, Changan New Energy, SAIC Maxus and other automobile brands. In addition, its automotive-grade BGA SSD engineering samples based on its self-developed main control are already in testing, and its self-developed UFS main control has also entered the engineering sample stage. UFS automotive-grade memory products will also be launched soon. At the same time, the company also We are actively deploying automotive-grade CXL SSD memory products, aiming to meet the evolving needs of the automotive market through a diversified product lineup.

Overall, Chinese automotive storage companies have achieved important breakthroughs in the fields of DRAM, NAND Flash, and NOR FLASH. However, if domestic vehicle storage manufacturers want to continue to increase their automotive market share, they also need to plan and deploy new products while further improving product quality and ensuring the high reliability of storage products. In addition, they also need to improve their customized service capabilities.