In-depth analysis of the automotive chip market

Qualcomm and MediaTek have both launched chips for car computers, with Qualcomm's 820A and MediaTek's MT2712 being the representatives. However, in the Chinese market, Qualcomm and MediaTek found themselves wrong. Manufacturers did not want strictly car-grade chips such as 820A or MT2712, and these chips did not include 4G Modem, which mobile phone chip manufacturers are good at. Chinese manufacturers are most concerned about cost.

In 2019, Qualcomm's 625, 410, and 450 chips, which were originally used in mobile phones or tablets in 2016, began to be favored by the car machine market. MediaTek's MT6735 and MT8665 also stood out and were used. Even domestic Spreadtrum's SL8541 and SC9853 began to be sought after. In 2020, at least 3 million sets of mobile phone chips were shipped in the field of pre-installed car machines, and at least 6 million sets were shipped in the aftermarket. The overall shipment volume is about 10 million sets. It is estimated that it will grow by at least 50% in 2021. MediaTek may even postpone the development of the 7-nanometer MT2713.

There are two characteristics of the Chinese car machine market. First, it is highly sensitive to cost. Second, it must have 4G connection capability. Even if users do not have this demand, China is deeply influenced by Internet thinking. Vehicle manufacturers must seize this traffic entrance. Traffic is king. Maybe one day it can be realized. Therefore, regardless of whether users have demand or not, even the lowest-end models must have 4G connection capability. Third, there are many Internet application apps, which have high requirements for hardware performance.

Based on the above three points, mobile phone chips have swept the car machine. Except for Great Wall and SAIC, they are still sticking to the car-grade method of 4G module plus i.mx6 dual/quad-core or J6. Most other local brand car manufacturers have reduced their attention to car regulations.

Let's first look at MediaTek. MediaTek's MT2712 has performed well in the international market and has entered the supply chains of Volkswagen and Toyota, but mass production and shipment will have to wait until next year. MediaTek's MT6735 and MT8665, which originally focused on the aftermarket, have shined in the Chinese market.

MT6735 was released in October 2014 and is MediaTek's first full-network 64-bit chip. In terms of CPU, it adopts a quad-core 64-bit Cortex-A53 architecture design with a main frequency of 1.3-1.5GHz. In terms of GPU, it integrates the Mali-T720 from ARM, which is a mid-to-low-end product with up to 8 cores and 64-256KB of L2 cache, but many features of the Mali-T760 are removed.

Under the 28nm HPM process, the maximum frequency of MT6735 is 695MHz, and it can output up to 695 million triangles and 5.6 billion pixels per second. Compared with the currently common Mali-400, the performance can be improved by up to 50%, and the energy efficiency ratio can be improved by more than 150%, which means it is more power-efficient. MT6735 supports up to 13 million pixel cameras and 1080p@30FPS video shooting. Unfortunately, the screen resolution can only support up to 720p. Bluetooth 4.0 and dual-band Wi-Fi are naturally also supported. The integrated baseband of this processor is the biggest highlight, supporting GSM/EVDO Rev. A/CDMA2000 1x/TD-SCDNA/WCDMA/TD-LTE/LTE FDD standards, among which EVDO Rev. A/CDMA2000 1x is the first time to appear on MediaTek's SOC, and the patent authorization comes from VMware Telecom.

MT6735 is positioned for low-end mobile phones or tablets. Obviously, mobile phones today will not use this chip, but this chip has already shared all the R&D costs, and only has the foundry manufacturing costs. Even if the price is lower than the most common automotive-grade car chip quad-core i.mx6, it still has a net profit. The author estimates that the net profit margin is at least 50%. A domestic brand uses MT6735 in large quantities in pre-installation.

In addition to MT6735, MediaTek also has 4G chip series MT8665, MT8666, and MT8667 for aftermarket streaming media rearview mirrors. Among them, MT8665 has occupied about 50% of the market in streaming media rearview mirrors, and Xiaoyi, Xiaomi Mijia, and Hengtai Interconnect are typical representatives. MT8665 has alarm-type ADAS functions, including lane departure and collision warnings, and does a pretty good job. It will enter the original equipment market in 2020. MT8665 corresponds to Qualcomm 410, but when it was launched in early 2016, it focused on the streaming media rearview mirror market.

MT8665 and MT6735 are basically the same. MT8665 has slightly lower power consumption, slightly higher reliability, and is closer to automotive standards.

MediaTek's next flagship product is MT8666, which is already being introduced by many OEMs, and is expected to shine in 2021 or 2022. Compared with MediaTek's standard automotive-grade MT2712, MT8666 is much stronger. MT2712 is a quad-core ARM Cortex-A35@1.3GHz processor and a dual-core Cortex-A72@1.6GHz processor, and the GPU is Mali-T880 MP4. MT8666 is much stronger than MT2712. MT8667 has reduced performance and lower power consumption, probably to be closer to standard automotive regulations. MT8666 focuses on high performance. It supports VOS virtual machines, three-screen display, instrument panel, central control and co-pilot, the central control and co-pilot support touch, and has 3-way 4-Lane MIPI CSI, which means a maximum of 12 1-megapixel camera inputs. It also supports UFS fast boot.

MT8666 application framework diagram

MT8666 supports up to CAT7 level, FDD/TDD up to 300Mbps downlink, 150Mbps uplink. It includes four connection modems: WLAN, Bluetooth, GPS and FM radio. It supports FR, HR, EFR, AMR FR, AMR HR and Wide-Band AMR voice formats, dual-microphone noise cancellation, sound track tracking, and high support for voice recognition. By the way, 90% of smart speakers on the market use MediaTek's MT8516 as the main chip, and MediaTek is very strong in voice recognition.

As for Qualcomm, Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 is also known as MSM8953. Qualcomm 625 was released in February 2016. It was very popular in the mobile phone field that year. Xiaomi used it extensively and it was called the first generation of super U. It was also Qualcomm's first 14nm mobile phone chip. It was still used by mobile phone manufacturers until 2018, and the shipment volume is estimated to have exceeded 100 million pieces. In fact, in car computers, a large new energy vehicle manufacturer uses Snapdragon 625 in almost all series. Although it cooperates with Huawei and prepares to replace Snapdragon 625 with Kirin 710, the replacement process will not be so fast, and it is still Snapdragon 625. At the same time, another domestic top three vehicle manufacturer has also begun to use Snapdragon 625 in large quantities. The top car computer at present is the Qualcomm SA8155P in GAC AionLX.

Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 internal framework and application diagram

Snapdragon 625 adopts A53 octa-core design, with a single-core frequency of up to 2.0GHz, 14nm FinFET process, and the GPU is Adreno 506. It supports up to 24 million pixel cameras, 4K video shooting, and fast charging technology.

Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 internally includes: APPS, Cortex A53 core, running Android; RPM (Resource Power Manager), CortexM3 core, mainly used for low-power applications; Modem (MSS_QDSP6), Qualcomm's own instruction set processor, processing 3G, 4G communication protocols, etc.; Pronto (WCNSS), processing wifi-related codes; LPASS, audio-related.

Qualcomm 820A is used in Xiaopeng, Ideal and Lynk & Co 05, but it may not have a 4G modem, and still needs a 4G module because the patent fee of Qualcomm's 820Am with 4G modem is a bit troublesome. The 820A without 4G modem is generally used in China. Land Rover Sport abroad uses 820Am.

Qualcomm's truly self-developed kryo architecture is the generation of architecture on Snapdragon 820/821. Later, the kryo 280 of Snapdragon 835 was customized based on Cortex-A73, the kryo 385 of Snapdragon 845 was customized based on Cortex-A75, and the kryo 485 of Snapdragon 855 was customized based on Cortex-A76. They are all based on the public version with minor changes, and are essentially different from the first generation of kryo. Qualcomm 820 can actually be regarded as a 4-core A72. Compared with A72, 820's integer computing power is very poor, but floating-point computing beats A72. It is a tie with A72, the frequency of the automotive version is reduced, and the computing performance is slightly lower.

The MT8666 CPU performance easily surpasses the 820A, but the GPU is much worse than the 820A. Qualcomm also has a high-performance CPU corresponding to it, namely the Snapdragon 660 (or possibly the Snapdragon 665). The Snapdragon 660 was launched in mid-2017, and it was upgraded from the 28nm process to the 14nm FinFet process. In theory, it has a significant improvement in power consumption control.

The previous generation Snapdragon 652 used the public version of the A72 architecture, while the Snapdragon 660 uses the semi-customized Kryo 260 architecture, with a maximum main frequency of 2.2GHz and 8 cores, of which 4 performance cores can reach up to 2.2GHz and 4 efficiency cores can reach up to 1.8GHz. In terms of memory bandwidth, the Snapdragon 660 has caught up with the level of flagship chips, and the bandwidth of 29.9GB/s has doubled compared to the Snapdragon 652. The GPU is Adreno512, the CPU is equivalent to MT8666, and the GPU is much better than MT8666. However, the car machine does not play 3D games, so this advantage is not obvious.

However, because the GPU occupies a large area of ​​the bare crystal, the cost is increased, and the price of Snapdragon is definitely much higher than MT8666, and the power consumption is also higher than MT8666. Qualcomm launched the low-power version of Snapdragon 660, 665. In terms of process, the Snapdragon 665 process is upgraded from the 14nm of 660 to the Samsung 11nm LPP process, which reduces power consumption and improves battery life. The core is four Kryo 260 large cores and four Kryo 260 small cores, with frequencies of 2.0GHz and 1.8GHz respectively. Compared with the full-blooded version of Snapdragon 660, the four large cores are 0.2GHz lower, which should be inferior. The GPU graphics core has been upgraded from Adreno 512 to Adreno 610, which seems to have no improvement (because the GPU of Snapdragon 675 was adreno612 before, which is not much different from Adreno 512 of Snapdragon 660), but 665 uses a new generation of GPU architecture and supports the new Vulkan 1.1, which can save 20% of power consumption.