The automotive MCU market is "reconstructed"! Surrounded by many competitors, Chinese local manufacturers are "ready to break through"

Against the backdrop of accelerated upgrades in the vehicle's EE architecture, the global automotive MCU market has entered a period of reshaping, and Chinese local automotive MCU manufacturers are gearing up to break through.

On September 25, GigaDevice (stock code 603986) launched a new generation of automotive-grade MCU GD32A7 series. It is reported that the GD32A7 series is equipped with an ultra-high-performance Arm® Cortex®-M7 core, and integrates excellent performance, enhanced security upgrades, and rich peripheral interfaces, which can meet various application scenarios such as body domain control (BDC), body control (BCM), remote communication terminal (T-BOX), lighting control (Lighting), battery management (BMS), on-board charger (OBC), chassis application (Chassis), DC converter (DC-DC), etc.

As we all know, due to high technical barriers and difficult R&D, my country's automotive-grade MCU market has always been highly dependent on imports. In the past few years, under the background of the "New Four Modernizations" and "chip shortage", although China's domestic automotive-grade MCUs have been applied on a large scale in areas such as wipers and lights, their coverage in high-end application scenarios such as power and chassis is still relatively weak.

GigaDevice is China's No. 1 32-bit Arm® general-purpose MCU supplier, and has successfully mass-produced 51 product series and over 600 MCU products. In the past few years, GigaDevice has entered the automotive field and launched automotive-grade GD32A503 series MCU products, GD32A490 series automotive-grade MCU and other chips. It has established cooperative relationships with many leading Tier 1 companies at home and abroad, and its application areas include headlights, ADAS monocular warning, and car dashboards.

Today, GigaDevice's newly launched automotive-grade MCU GD32A7 series products can meet the needs of high-end application scenarios such as chassis, further expanding GigaDevice's product layout in the automotive electronics field.

Specifically, GigaDevice's newly launched GD32A7 series offers multiple models such as GD32A71x/GD32A72x/GD32A74x to choose from, supporting single-core, dual-core, and single-core lock-step options, with a main frequency of 160MHz and a computing power of up to 763 DMIPS. It is equipped with up to 4MB of on-chip Flash and 512KB of SRAM, supports dual Flash BANK, and can meet the needs of seamless OTA upgrades.

It is worth noting that this series of automotive-grade MCU chips is powered by a wide voltage of 2.97-5.5V, can operate stably within the operating temperature range of -40℃~+125℃, meets the AEC-Q100 Grade1 standard, and has a working life of more than 15 years, laying a solid hardware foundation for the safe and stable operation of the system.

At the same time, in order to meet the diverse application requirements of the body, interconnection and chassis, GigaDevice's newly launched GD32A7 series products also integrate a wealth of peripheral interfaces, including 6-channel SENT interfaces; 8-channel CAN FD, 12-channel LIN multi-channel high-speed vehicle bus interfaces; and 1x10/100Mbps Ethernet interface supporting AVB and TSN; in addition, it also provides 8-channel SPI, 1-channel Quad SPI, 2-channel I2C and other interfaces.

In terms of safety and reliability, the GD32A71x/GD32A72x series complies with the functional safety ISO 26262 ASIL B standard, and the GD32A74x series complies with the highest level functional safety ISO 26262 ASIL D standard. At the same time, all products meet the international Evita-full standard information security requirements and support the national encryption algorithm SM2/SM3/SM4, ensuring the security and reliability of data.

It is understood that GigaDevice's newly launched GD32A71x/GD32A72x/GD32A74x product portfolio provides 24 models in 5 packages. It has passed the early user verification and is officially open for sample and development board applications.

In addition, GigaDevice's newly launched GD32A71x/GD32A72x/GD32A74x products also provide complete ecosystem hardware and software support, which can help customers complete development more efficiently and conveniently. For example, GigaDevice's newly launched GD32A7 series supports the AUTOSAR® automotive open system architecture, can provide MCU underlying software MCAL, and closely cooperates with many well-known domestic and foreign AUTOSAR basic software suppliers such as Vector, EB, ETAS, Puhua, NeuSAR, Hirain, GRC, etc., to achieve corresponding adaptation with their BSW or OS, etc.

Secondly, this series of products can also support mainstream compilers such as GreenHills, Hightec, IAR, Keil, Tasking, and mainstream debuggers such as Trace32, PLS, I-system, etc., to meet customers' requirements for convenient and efficient application development and functional safety design; at the same time, this series of products is equipped with rich documentation and is developed in accordance with the functional safety ISO 26262 ASIL D process, which can provide comprehensive support for customer system functional safety development, including the required functional safety customer documents, such as product safety manuals, configurable FMEDA forms, and safety files required for system certification; as well as functional safety support software, such as CPU STL, safety Lib and MCAL.

Finally, this series of products also excels in information security, supporting leading information security libraries at home and abroad such as Vector, EB, ETAS, and Yishi Intelligence, providing solid protection for vehicle data. In addition, it also complies with ISO/SAE 21434 network information security system certification, effectively helping automakers meet the UN R155/R156 and GB44495 regulatory certification requirements for overseas markets.

Ms. He Fang, head of GigaDevice's automotive product department, said: "The automotive industry is undergoing tremendous changes and showing great growth momentum. In this transformation, MCU evolution has become one of the key drivers of intelligent innovation in automotive electronics. GigaDevice is rooted in the field of automotive applications and has launched a new generation of GD32A71x/GD32A72x/GD32A74x series of automotive-grade MCUs, which are not only equipped with advanced technologies, but also focus on building an extensible framework platform to support IP reuse, thereby achieving efficient development and deployment, and fully responding to the various complex challenges faced by customers in the field of automotive electronics."

At this stage, automotive chips have become the commanding heights of a new round of competition in China's smart car industry, and are of great significance to the development of China's smart car industry. Chinese local chip manufacturers, represented by GigaDevice, have made important breakthroughs in the fields of automotive-grade MCUs and automotive-grade storage chips by virtue of their in-depth understanding of the local market and technological innovation. In the future, as more and more domestic chip companies rush to layout, Chinese local automotive-grade MCU products will inevitably achieve differentiated breakthroughs.