Before 2020, the focus of automobiles' "new four modernizations" is on electrification, so after 2020, the focus of automobiles' "new four modernizations" will shift to intelligence. Tesla's FSD optional price has been rising again and again, and the sales data of major new forces' car manufacturers have hit new highs and high-end models equipped with high computing power computing platforms have been frequently released. It is obvious that the era of automotive intelligence has come. But a slightly embarrassing fact is that the automotive intelligent relies on only a handful of mass-producible automotive-grade computing platforms, and the mass production time on PPT is also dazzling. Today we will talk about what is the difficulty of mass production of automotive-grade computing platforms and how to understand the mass production time point at the PPT of the press conference.
For easy understanding, the chip below can be regarded as the foundation of the automotive-grade computing platform. The automotive-grade computing platform itself can be regarded as the house on the foundation. The software supporting the automotive-grade computing platform can be regarded as the interior decoration and property management of the house. Finally, the house needs to be evaluated by the environmental protection, fire protection, water and electricity, property and other departments before it can be officially sold and moved in. It is difficult to cross the chip to the platform
"The foundation is not solid, the earth is shaken", the chip is the first hurdle. Compared with consumer-grade chips, automotive-grade chips have extremely strict certification and extremely high requirements. There is a more familiar AEC-Q100 certification for chips in the automotive industry. This certification is a test standard for automotive electronic components including reliability formulated by the AEC Automotive Electronics Association. But the chip passing the AEC-Q100 test is only one link. The automotive-grade chip is a full industrial chain requirement involving chip design, slitting process, packaging testing, product testing, product life cycle, etc.:
- chip design: the automotive-grade chip platform and architecture design, and must comply with the automotive-grade chip functional safety ISO26262 standard
- chip technology: the automotive-grade wafer production line must comply with the ISO/IATF 16949 specification
- packaging test: the automotive-grade packaging production line must comply with the ISO/IATF 16949 specification
- packaging test: the automotive-grade packaging production line must comply with the ISO/IATF 16949 specification
- Product test: Automotive-grade reliability test, it must pass the AEC-Q100 test standard
- product yield: meets the high yield requirements of automotive-grade chip products
- product life cycle: meets the ultra-long supply cycle requirements of automotive-grade chips
Therefore, the general time interval between chips in the automotive industry from release to mass production is 3 to 4 years. Therefore, new chips released in 2020, such as Nvidia's Orin and Qualcomm's Snapdragon Ride, may need to wait at least until 2022 or 2023 until they are truly mass-produced. The earliest release of Mobileye's EyeQ5 will be expected to be mass-produced in 2021 even after 5 years.
In addition to the foundation, the overall supporting frame, apartment layout, three-way and one heating, etc. of the house are also large-scale projects. Therefore, in addition to chips, the R&D workload of automotive-grade computing platforms is not small. This is another new round of platform-level design, verification, certification to mass production process, and still requires strict durability, stability and reliability testing. Although some of the work can overlap with the R&D time of chips, it will still be delayed by another 1 to 2 years compared to the chip mass production time.
platform supporting software is difficult to work
Houses without supporting facilities are no different from graves. A new chip and computing platform only builds a hardware foundation, and also needs to be equipped with various underlying driver software and functional security cores to realize the potential of the hardware and underlying security requirements. It also needs to be equipped with compatible OS and middleware. The upper-level applications must be able to run smoothly on the platform, involving many links such as development, tuning, optimization, and deployment. In the development stage, it involves supporting integrated development environment and configuration tools; in the debugging stage, it involves simulation testing, bug management, visual playback and other tools; in the optimization stage, it involves Log recording and Profiling analysis tools; in the deployment stage, it also involves batch deployment, OTA upgrade and other tools. The workload of software development and adaptation to the platform is extremely large, even exceeding the R&D workload of the hardware itself, and the R&D cycle is required to be longer. Unless the investment in resources is increased, chips, hardware platforms, supporting software and tools, and multiple R&D teams work together to shorten mass production time as much as possible.
platform is difficult to stabilize and reliable
The city gate caught fire, causing disaster. Chips are the product of high-end technology in internal structure and manufacturing, which is very powerful, but in the external natural environment, it is a "flower in a greenhouse". In addition to forming a logical complete system with chips, memory, network switching, connectors, etc., the automotive-grade computing platform also needs to deal with various challenges in the harsh external environment and protect the chips and other "pool fish" in order to ensure the safety and reliability of the system level as a whole.
l Environmental adaptability requirements
The temperature of the car driving changes drastically, and automotive-grade electronic components have stronger adaptability to the environment. Standards such as humidity, dust, harmful gas erosion, mold, etc. must be higher. For example, the temperature requirements around the engine are -40 degrees Celsius -150 degrees Celsius, and the cockpit is -40 degrees Celsius -85 degrees Celsius. In an electromagnetic environment, automotive-grade electronic components must not only operate in accordance with the requirements, but also the equipment must not affect the normal operation of other parts of the vehicle after installation. On the other hand, the equipment must have a certain degree of immunity to the electromagnetic interference present in the environment, and be able to work normally in a complex electromagnetic environment without being affected by the outside world.
l Lifetime reliability requirements
Compared with ordinary civilian products, as a mobile travel tool, the scenes and road conditions involved in cars are very complex, and more vibrations, impacts and other situations will occur, so their vibration standards are also higher. Usually, the design life of a car is at least 8 years or more than 100,000 kilometers, far exceeding consumer electronic products. In the automotive field, the reliability requirements of parts are generally described and required by PPM (one in a million).
l Process consistency requirements
After the car enters the stage of large-scale production, for example, some best-selling models have sales of tens of thousands of vehicles per month, which puts higher requirements on the consistency of product quality, and electronic components are no exception. Although various electronic components on vehicles are constantly developing towards small and lightweight, compared with ordinary civilian electronic products, automotive-grade components have more relaxed requirements for volume and power consumption. Therefore, for the chips of the computing platform, it is not the best advanced processes such as 7nm and 5nm, but the more mature processes such as 14nm and 12nm have better process consistency and lower costs.
platform industry standard certification difficulty
platform meets the automotive-grade reliability requirements, and the authoritative inspection and certification structure of third-party have the final say. Since automobiles are durable large commodities, Europe has accumulated rich practical experience and industry standards in its more than 100 years of development of the automobile industry. From the entire life cycle nodes such as automobile research and development, production, manufacturing, transportation, sales, service, recall, etc., it has made many standardized, processed and institutionalized quality and safety control measures, and formed many mature quality control processes and certification systems, which has established a high quality threshold for automotive-grade electronic components to enter the automobile industry and ensured the safe operation of cars to the greatest extent.
l Overall Quality System Certification IATF 16949
IATF 16949 is a quality management system specification for the international automotive industry's design, development, production, and corresponding installation and service of automobile-related products. IATF 16949 emphasizes continuous improvement, defect prevention and reduction of bias, adding more detailed requirements for the automotive industry in terms of personnel capacity, awareness and training, design and development, production and service provision, monitoring and measurement devices control, and measurement, analysis and improvement.
l Software Quality System Certification ASPICE
ASPICE (Automotive Software Process Improvement and Capability dEtermination) contains two parts: the process reference model and the process evaluation model. Bidirectional traceability and consistency are also particularly concerned by ASPICE. Therefore, ASPICE requires that the software requirements documents need to be verified and need specific standard definitions.Software design documents need to be evaluated, and evaluation criteria can include quality characteristics, reliability, security and usability, etc. It focuses on software requirements analysis, architecture design, unit testing and integration testing, etc., covering the entire process of software engineering.
l Functional Safety Certification ISO 26262
ISO 26262 provides automotive safety standards for management, development, production, operation, service, scrapping, etc., which covers the overall development process of functional safety (including requirements planning, design, implementation, integration, verification, confirmation and configuration). The ISO 26262 standard determines the security requirements level for the system or a certain component of the system based on the degree of security risks. As the ASIL level increases, the requirements for system hardware and software development processes are also enhanced. Generally, in the mass production stage of the car, the systems or components on the car need to meet the safety requirements of ASIL D.
Conclusion
Because cars are special attributes related to personal safety, safety is always the first priority.
has several unavoidable roads to go from the release of chip PPT to the launch of mass-produced cars: first, chips must meet the automotive-grade safety requirements, and then they must overcome four obstacles, including chips to platform, platform supporting software development, platform stability and reliability, and platform industry standard certification. These obstacles can be completed in a short period of 3 to 4 years, and in a long period of 4 to 5 years. It is difficult to achieve overnight unless you cut corners and take shortcuts. Therefore, although many companies in the industry have released various new chips and new platforms, in fact, most of the futures are in general, and it will take a long time to meet the mass production requirements of automotive specifications.
For consumers, they need to look at all kinds of dazzling new smart car conferences more rationally. It is not safe for anyone to live in an unsafe house; for car companies, it is particularly critical to choose chip and computing platform suppliers that put safety first. Although the market is the biggest opportunity, time and life are the biggest costs!
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-