Three well-known domestic companies share topics on automotive electronics

Chip Superman held the Chip Superman Automotive Electronics Technology Forum at the "2019 Asia Electronics Production Equipment and Microelectronics Industry Exhibition". Hu Xiaojiang, product manager of Shenzhen Xinhai Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Xinhai Technology"), Yu Rongjiang, technical support manager of Jiangsu Jiejie Microelectronics Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Jiejie Semiconductor"), Xu Lai, co-founder and COO of Xinlai Technology, and other well-known domestic automotive electronics company leaders attended the forum and shared their views on topics such as in-vehicle pressure-sensitive touch, in-vehicle overvoltage protection devices, and RISC-V MCU industry ecology.

1. Chipsea Technology: In-vehicle human-computer interaction - pressure-sensitive touch

Hu Xiaojiang, Product Manager of Chipsea Technology

Hu Xiaojiang, product manager of Xinhai Technology, took the theme of "In-vehicle Human-Computer Interaction - Pressure Touch" to give an in-depth interpretation of Xinhai Technology's products and the principles and applications of pressure sensors.

As a veteran in the semiconductor industry for 16 years, Xinhai Technology started out with high-precision ADCs. Its high-precision SOCs have accounted for 60% of the market share in the weighing instrument segment. The world's first Force Touch chip comes from Xinhai Technology. With years of experience in pressure signal detection, Xinhai Technology has accumulated a lot of technologies in chip detection, algorithms, etc., making sufficient reserves for its application of pressure-sensitive touch in different usage scenarios.

Regarding how to improve the signal-to-noise ratio and prevent false touches, Xinhai Technology has accumulated a lot of technology in related algorithms. Anti-interference, precision, and algorithms have always been the strengths of Xinhai Technology. Xinhai Technology's pressure detection technology has been fully verified in the field of weighing instruments.

This time, Hu Xiaojiang mainly introduced the application of Xinhai Technology's products and solutions in the three market fields of "1+3+N": "1" refers to mobile phones and peripheral accessories, "3" refers to smart scales, health analyzers, bracelets/smart watches, and "N" refers to IoT smart hardware covering consumer electronics, smart industry, smart travel, smart home, etc.

In mobile phones and peripheral applications, Xinhai Technology has many application cases, such as the hidden pressure-sensitive Home button strongly promoted by Meizu. There is also the concept of the most popular pressure touch key to replace mechanical buttons such as volume keys and power keys. There is no need to open holes on the side to improve the appearance of the whole machine. The recently exposed vivo and Huawei flagship models may use a "waterfall screen" to further enhance the appearance and futuristic sense of the phone. The side of the phone has also become a display screen to achieve a borderless visual effect. In this way, the volume and power buttons that originally occupied the middle frame position have nowhere to be placed. The pressure touch key is the best partner for this scenario. In addition to pressure touch, there are also many mass production cases of Xinhai Technology MCU in TWS headphones, mobile phone adapters, wireless charging and other products.

In the field of health and measurement, Xinhai Technology is committed to building a platform of "precise measurement, chronic disease prediction, and precise intervention" through continuous innovation in the fields of health measurement chips, algorithms, and big data AI, helping people cure diseases and prolonging the lives of ordinary people. The one-stop solution launched by Xinhai Technology can help customers shorten the development cycle from the longest 9 months to the shortest 15 days, reduce customers' investment in underlying development, greatly reduce their costs, and allow customers to focus more on application innovation.

Xinhai Technology's signal chain MCU is positioned as a core device that provides "precise measurement + efficient processing + reliable control + ease of use" for AIoT node devices. Its product line covers four categories of 8/32-bit MCU products: wireless, high-precision, USB PD, and mainstream. The cumulative chip shipments have exceeded 1.2 billion.

At this forum, Hu Xiaojiang introduced in detail the application, characteristics, technical principles and other aspects of pressure touch in the automotive field, and demonstrated the advantages and prospects of pressure touch. Xinhai Technology's pressure touch solution has the following characteristics:

1. Any surface: can be applied to surfaces including plastic, glass, metal, etc.

2. Ultra-high sensitivity: The chip can detect deformation of 1 micron.

3. Ultra-low power consumption: integrated low power consumption module, long standby time.

4. Waterproof environment: can cope with running water, "sweating" and other situations.

5. Long service life: one-piece molding, dust and oil proof, the number of presses can reach millions.

Hu Xiaojiang believes that "today's pressure touch technology combines the advantages of mechanical buttons and capacitive buttons very well. It not only retains the characteristics of mechanical buttons that are not easily touched by mistake, but also the beautiful and durable characteristics of capacitive buttons, while further improving the reliability of button operation. Multi-level pressure button functions can be realized on any surface material (plastic, glass, metal, etc.), bringing more freedom to the interior design and interactive experience of the majority of car companies. I believe it is the direction of future in-vehicle interaction."

2. Jiejie Semiconductor: Application of automotive overvoltage protection devices

Jiejie Semiconductor was founded in 1995, listed on the Growth Enterprise Market in 2017, and was named one of the "Top Ten Power Device Companies" in 2019. It is a leading IDM manufacturer in the field of semiconductor power devices. Yu Rongjiang, technical support manager of Jiejie Semiconductor, first introduced the company's development history and product capacity. Among them, the production capacity of Jiejie's Qidong factory's 4-inch wafer factory is 1.6 million pieces, and the design capacity of the Nantong factory is 2.4 million. In recent months, the chip is still expanding, and it is expected that the annual output this year can reach about 3 million to 3.5 million pieces.

Yu Rongjiang, technical support manager of Jiejie Semiconductor, said that the company's confidence in entering the automotive front-end market comes from its unique fully automated SMX packaging technology. "Compared with our competitors, our solution has the following advantages: the equipment is highly positioned, so larger chips can be packaged; the product sintering degree is relatively high, so the chip will not tilt during the packaging process; the void rate is small, which improves the performance of the chip; it is suitable for automated production, and product consistency is guaranteed. The package appearance is consistent with that of Littelfuse, Vishay, Bourns, and Onsemi."

Yu Rongjiang, Technical Support Manager of Jiejie Semiconductor

Yu Rongjiang focused on the application architecture of automotive electronic overvoltage protection devices. There are two applications for overvoltage protection devices on vehicles, one of which is load dumping. Load dumping simulates the transient state generated when the AC generator is generating charging current when the battery is low or the power is off, and there are still other loads on the generator circuit. The magnitude of load dumping depends on the generator speed and the excitation field strength of the generator when the battery is disconnected. All electrical devices that are directly connected to the battery generator will generate load dump interference, which is mainly reflected in the ignition valve, including systems such as the engine control unit, engine modulator, and front-end devices such as HUD front-end display and car central control.

According to Yu Rongjiang, Jiejie Semiconductor mainly promotes the DO-218AB series products in the automotive OEM market. Currently, foreign brands still have a monopoly on this series of products. Before Jiejie Semiconductor entered the DO-218AB series market, the market share of domestic brands was less than 2%. Jiejie started to make this product in 2015. So far, the shipment volume of this series of products of Jiejie accounts for about 6% of the total market demand, while other domestic manufacturers still account for less than 2%.

In addition, Yu Rongjiang explained the application of overvoltage protection devices in BMS systems and OBC chargers, allowing everyone to further understand the principles, processes and functions of overvoltage protection devices from a technical perspective.

3. Xinlai Technology:

Empowering the domestic RISC-V MCU industry ecosystem

On August 22, 2019, GigaDevice launched a new GD32V series RISC-V core 32-bit general-purpose MCU, which attracted wide attention in the industry. In addition to GigaDevice, the leading general-purpose MCU supplier, there is another company that has attracted widespread attention, namely Coreline Technology.

The GD32VF103 series MCU adopts the brand-new Bumblebee processor core based on the open source instruction set architecture RISC-V. It is a commercial RISC-V processor core independently jointly developed by GigaDevice and China's leading RISC-V processor core IP and solution manufacturer Coreline Technology for the Internet of Things and other ultra-low power consumption scenarios.

Xu Lai, Co-founder and COO of Xinlai Technology

At this forum, Xu Lai, co-founder and COO of Xinlai Technology, delivered a speech on the theme of "Xinlai Technology Empowers the Domestic RISC-V MCU Industry Ecosystem", mainly introducing how Xinlai Technology and RISC-V can help the domestic MCU industry.