What is so difficult about automotive-grade chips?

Different from chips for other purposes, automotive-grade chips have an independent set of specifications and standards applicable to automotive electronic components, such as an operating temperature range of -40°~125°, a component life of 20 years, strong impact resistance, and many professional electrical characteristics tests, environmental stress tests, reliability tests, etc. The requirements for consumer electronics are much lower, with an operating temperature usually between 0 and 70° and a chip life of about 3 to 5 years.

Difficulty 1: Certification test is difficult

It is precisely because of these special features of automotive-grade chips that many challenges are brought to the research and development of automotive chips.

We all know that a smart car uses thousands of chips. Chips with different uses have different requirements and difficulties.

The automotive electronics standards formulated by the United States divide it into 5 levels. The requirements for chips in various automotive systems are from high to low: power safety system > body control system > driving control system > communication system > entertainment system.

Deviations are acceptable for some chips, such as display driver chips for entertainment systems, Bluetooth chips, etc., which have little impact on safety.

Some chips related to automobile safety must never lower their standards. Once an accident occurs, the consequences are unimaginable, so these chips must have zero failures and must pass 41 tests in 7 categories of AEC-Q100. The average minimum time to complete all tests is about 6 months.

Difficulty 2: Chip optimization is difficult

Chip optimization is difficult.

Chips used in autonomous driving require computing power. Autonomous driving needs to process massive amounts of road data and respond quickly. From the perspective of image processing, our human brain is an extremely powerful GPU with very strong image rendering capabilities. Therefore, to achieve higher-level autonomous driving, high computing power is still indispensable. Of course, high computing power does not necessarily mean the best experience. For example, Horizon will combine cars and AI to improve the efficiency of chip use based on high-computing power hardware. Therefore, great automotive chip companies are all companies with strong software and hardware integration capabilities.

Difficulty 3: Slow implementation and difficult mass production

In August 1990, the State Council decided to promote the upgrading of the semiconductor industry during the Eighth Five-Year Plan (1990-1995), and the "908 Project" plan was launched with the goal of bringing semiconductor process manufacturing technology below 1 micron.

However, the progress of the "908 Project" was not satisfactory. It took two years to approve the funding, three years to introduce the 0.9-micron process from AT&T in the United States, and more than two years to build the factory, a total of more than seven years. In that era when semiconductor technology was advancing rapidly in accordance with Moore's Law, we were racing against time. The result of losing the race was that the wafer production line was "outdated as soon as it was put into production" and it was difficult to make a profit. It usually takes 3-5 years for an automotive chip to go from design tape-out, vehicle regulation certification, vehicle model import verification, to mass production and installation. Only when large-scale mass production is finally implemented can the company truly survive.

Difficulty 4: Difficulty in reducing costs

Many military-grade chips are produced regardless of cost, while consumer electronics do not require such a high cost for verification and testing. In fact, many automotive-grade chips are only used in cars after they have matured in the consumer electronics and industrial fields.

Therefore, it is really not easy to develop automotive chips. Although the development of automotive-grade chips is difficult, it is still a breakthrough for domestic chip substitution. The localization of automotive-grade chips will also help improve the overall strength of domestic chip design.