Under the influence of epidemic situation, geopolitics and other factors, chips have become a major constraint in the development of China’s automobile industry. Especially at the moment of electric and intelligent transformation, the “core disease” of China’s automobile industry is particularly serious.
On September 12, foreign media quoted insiders as saying that the Biden government planned to expand the restrictions on American enterprises exporting AI chips and chip manufacturing equipment to China next month.
A few days ago, the United States had explicitly restricted the export of high-end chips to China, and did not allow Nvidia A100, H100, AMD MI100, MI200 and other high-performance AI chips to be sold to Chinese enterprises. These chips are crucial for training AI systems.
For the auto industry, these high-end chips are needed for cloud based training. Therefore, the restrictions on high-end chips that have been added in turn in the United States are undoubtedly stuck at the key point of the intelligent transformation of the auto industry, which has sounded the alarm again for the Chinese auto industry.
Recently, at the 4th Global New Energy and Smart Automobile Supply Chain Innovation Conference, Miao Wei, Deputy Director of the Economic Committee of the CPPCC National Committee, and leaders from automobile enterprises and chip enterprises conducted in-depth analysis on the automobile chip supply chain, discussed and explored China’s policies and solutions.
Where is it stuck to produce the independent chip?
Most people may be familiar with the consumer chips used in smart phones. Qualcomm’s Snapdragon chip, Huawei’s Kirin chip and Apple’s A series chip. A small chip often becomes the biggest selling point of mobile phones and determines the performance of mobile phones. Anyone who refuses to accept it will get a score.
In the era of electrification and intelligence, chips as the “brain” of cars have become more and more important. Unlike the traditional automobile era, the engine, as the “heart” of the automobile, is the most important part of the automobile.
Compared with the familiar consumer chips, the automotive chips have worse operating conditions and require a longer life. Therefore, the early development and verification period of vehicle specification level chips is longer, and the standards and requirements that suppliers need to meet are also higher.
In a word, the development, certification and import test cycle of vehicle specification level chips is long, and the threshold for getting on the vehicle is high. So, how about the development of chips in various links in China in recent years?
First of all, chip design enterprises have made the fastest progress, which is mainly due to the development of smart phones. Huawei HiSilicon once entered the world’s top ten IC design enterprises. In addition, there are a large number of chip design companies in China, such as Ziguang Zhanrui, Cambrian and Horizon. But globally, the United States still ranks first in the field of chip design, accounting for 68% of the market share.
Secondly, the sealing and testing link is the chip field that China first entered, and it is also the field in which China’s chip industry has the most mature development, the most stable growth, and the easiest to take the lead in achieving domestic substitution. At present, the mainland’s three enterprises, Changdian Technology, Tongfu Microelectronics and Huatian Technology, account for 21% of the global market share.
Finally, in the chip manufacturing process, there is a big gap between China and the world’s leading level. At present, the most advanced process can only reach 14 nm. Moreover, because the United States has ordered the Netherlands EUV lithography machine not to be exported to China, China is blocked in upgrading to more advanced processes.
Through the above analysis, it can be found that the design capability of the domestic chip industry has achieved rapid development, and the sealing and testing capability has basically met the vehicle specification capability. What needs to be improved urgently is the wafer processing, manufacturing process and other capabilities, which is also the key to the chip bottleneck.
However, it is worth noting that the chips used in the automotive field do not have high requirements for the manufacturing process. A large number of MCU, analog ICs, etc. still rely on the mature manufacturing process above 28nm. In addition, by packaging different types of chips together, we can also, to a certain extent, overcome the shortcomings of advanced manufacturing processes in China.
Car enterprises should be “chain leaders” and build new supply chain relationships
Under the trend of electrification and intelligence, it has brought about a rapid increase in the proportion of vehicle electronics, as well as a rapid increase in the demand for automotive chips.
“The demand for chips brought about by electrification may be twice that of traditional fuel vehicles. With the trend of intelligent driving towards L4 and L5 levels in the future, the demand for new semiconductors may be 8-10 times that of traditional non intelligent vehicles.”
Wang Shengyang, the founder, chairman and general manager of Nanochip Microelectronics, said that, taking a luxury model as an example, after the transition from traditional fuel vehicles to intelligent electric vehicles, the value of its single car chip rapidly increased from more than 600 dollars to nearly 3000 dollars.
At the same time, the demand for chip performance is also increasing. The conversion of intelligent cockpit from single screen to multi screen, and the conversion of autopilot from low-end to high-end, are inseparable from the supply of Dacuanli chips.
Zhang Qiang, chairman of Xinchi Technology, believes that under the influence of intelligent and electrification of cars, the relationship between chips and car factories, as well as between Tier 1, has begun to shift from supply to “win-win”. Now, it is not a one-way relationship, but a diversified relationship.
“The convenience of supply and demand in the traditional automobile industry is gradually blurred, and the supply chain structure is constantly changing. New suppliers and automobile enterprises are changing from supply and demand to cooperation, and jointly build a new intelligent system for the automobile industry,” said Qi Jun, deputy general manager of the procurement center of Anhui Jianghuai Automobile Group Co., Ltd.
In the past, auto enterprises basically didn’t care about chips. The selection and matching of chips were basically completed by primary and secondary suppliers. Therefore, in the traditional supply chain, auto enterprises are basically a user.
“Now, not all auto enterprises must make cores, but they must understand cores”. Miao Wei believes that auto enterprises should take the responsibility of “chain leader” now, and must establish a cross industry alliance and cooperation for their own development and chip development, not let it go. This is related to the future development of auto enterprises, and only in this way can a good industrial development ecology be formed.
“Lack of core” has been taken seriously, but “lack of soul” is easy to be ignored
“Lack of core” is usually associated with “less soul”, where the soul is the operating system of the car.
“Over the past few years, car enterprises have deeply realized the constraints of chip shortage on our development, but most enterprises have not realized that the lack of operating system will be a fatal problem.”
Miao Wei believes that in the process of conversion from functional products to intelligent products, if there is no operating system, no matter how strong the chip is, no matter how good the car is, it is all building on the beach. If the problem of “lacking core and soul” is not solved, we will not go fast or far.
Why? The mobile phone operating system is a lesson from the past.
In the process of conversion from functional phones to smartphones, Apple has created a closed and closed operating system, iOS, which is not open source, while Google has launched an open source, open and free Android operating system for everyone to use. Except for Apple’s 10% – 20% market share, all mobile phone enterprises in the world have chosen Android as their operating system.
However, two years ago, the United States suppressed Huawei. In addition to stopping the supply of chips, it also restricted Huawei from using the Android operating system and the APP software installed on Android. This also forced Huawei to temporarily convert the previous industrial operating system, Hongmeng. Today’s Hongmeng has become a full-scenario distributed operating system, in which automobiles are also an important application scenario.
With the development of the electronic and electrical architecture of the whole vehicle from distributed to centralized, the software of the vehicle has evolved from the embedded software development in the past to the full-stack software development. The role of the operating system is to link the previous and the next, and it can be responsible for internal management and external interaction.
By creating an operating system, hardware and software can be decoupled. One operating system can adapt to several heterogeneous chips, and can adapt to the same type of chips from different manufacturers. Solving the problem of the operating system can also solve the chip to a certain extent. The problem of hindering the development of advanced manufacturing process.
If the operating system of the car is like the operating system of the smartphone, it adopts an open source, open, and completely free operating system. Once this ecology is formed, it will be the law of the jungle, and the winner will take all. At present, Tesla has decided to get rid of AutoSar and write code line by line, creating a closed-loop operating system that is not open.
Regarding the opportunity for the operating system to be autonomous and controllable, Miao Wei judged that the development pattern of the global smart car has not yet been determined, and the time window left for us is about three years, at most five years.
“We need to increase the sense of urgency. I would rather spend three years and work hard to build an autonomous and controllable, open source, and preferably free operating system, and form an industrial development ecology in the Chinese market.” he appealed.
car cloud summary
Car cloud summary
The shortage of chips has had a more or less impact on the global auto industry. For Chinese cars, under the premise of opening up, it is essential to strengthen the replacement of domestic chips, but this replacement is not 100% seeking autonomy. Scientific, uneconomical, and impossible.
At the same time, what is more worthy of attention than “lack of core” is “less soul”. An autonomous and controllable operating system is the key to winning the second half of automotive intelligence.
Only by solving the “lack of core” can China’s auto industry truly become strong.
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