As the market chooses smart driving solutions, it is more inclined to consider factors such as localization and cost performance, and the replacement of chip platform solutions is also in an active cycle.
"The company's latest goal is to achieve a revenue of US$45 billion by 2030. At the same time, China's growth rate exceeds the global growth rate." This is the statement of Jiang Han, vice president of Texas Instruments (TI) and president of China in March this year.
Up to now, TI has entered the Chinese market for 37 years, established R&D teams in Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen, and established product distribution centers in Shanghai and Shenzhen.
Financial data shows that TI's global sales will reach US$20.03 billion in 2022, an increase of about 9.2% year-on-year; among them, the automotive business revenue accounted for 25%, involving multiple product lines such as body electronic components, new energy power system-related analog and embedded ICs, ADAS (including sensors) and infotainment SoC.
According to Cai Zheng, general manager of TI China's automotive business unit, compared with its competitors, the company's in-vehicle product categories and coverage applications are very wide, with more than 7,000 kinds of car-grade products. Among them, the smart driving product line is undoubtedly the most concerned part.
For example, TI's TDA series has always been the main force in the automatic parking market. Especially the parking controller based on the early TDA2 chip solution supports automatic parking and panoramic view functions.
With the delivery of the TDA4 series, TI has become the beneficiary of the first wave of market dividends in the market of high-end integrated parking/memory parking and the first generation of integrated domain controllers for parking and parking. For example, Desay SV's IPU02 based on TDA4 is also the world's first TDA4 front-loading mass production project.
At the same time, different solutions including J3+TDA4, Mobileye EyeQ4+TDA4, double/single TDA4, etc. are also gradually getting fixed-points and delivered to mass-produced cars on the integrated track of travel and parking.
As we all know, thanks to the advantages of strong performance, low cost, low power consumption, high security, and outstanding comprehensive capabilities, as well as the accumulation of mass production and development experience in the parking functional domain, the TDA4 series has been selected as one of the main computing platforms by many car manufacturers and first-tier suppliers in the past few years.
However, the development of the TDA4 platform requires the software algorithm team to have a strong control over the system (the actual available computing power will be limited, that is, the actual effective utilization rate), an in-depth understanding of the chip infrastructure, and excellent algorithm design capabilities and data compression capabilities.
With the increase of chip options on the market (smart driving computing platform), TI's partners are also beginning to shift positions. For example, as TI's long-term partner in the ADAS camera all-in-one machine, Continental announced this year that the next generation will switch to Ambarella's CV3 solution.
In addition, in the Chinese market, Continental has established a joint venture company (Continental Core Smart Driving) with Horizon, and the first mass production project (8MP camera all-in-one machine based on Journey 3) has officially started delivery in Changan Deep Blue SL03.
Also as the main force in the domestic market to create integrated travel and parking solutions based on TDA4, Momo Zhixing also announced this year that it has reached a strategic cooperation with Yingchi Technology to jointly create a cost-effective and highly competitive single-journey 3-chip integrated travel and parking solution.
According to public information, up to now, Horizon Single Journey’s 3-way parking integrated solution has won the mass-production designated cooperation of more than 20 models from many car companies, including the new blockbuster model just released by a leading new energy car company in China.
In addition, Baidu Apollo also recently officially announced the creation of a software-hardware integrated intelligent driving product based on the Black Sesame Smart Huashan No. 2® A1000 series chip, covering high-speed NOA driving and parking functions, and is planned to be officially launched in the third quarter of 2023.
As early as 2020, Baidu Apollo created the mass-produced high-end intelligent driving product ANP based on the TDA4 processor series, and successively implemented high-end parking functions on several models.
However, the mobile and parking integrated system still has certain requirements for the redundancy of computing power. At the same time, the combination of cost-effective solutions + localized algorithms and localized chips, as well as the high-efficiency computing of the chip and the openness and ease of use of the software development platform have also become the entry point for TI to be "encircled and suppressed".
For example, the Black Sesame Smart Huashan No. 2 A1000 chip, as the first high-performance mass-produced autonomous driving chip in China, can support L2+ and above-level autonomous driving, with a computing power of 58TOPS (INT8). At the same time, the three series of A1000, A1000L, and A1000Pro have INT8 precision computing power of 58TOPS, 16TOPS, and 106TOPS respectively.
In addition, for the mobile park integrated domain controller that supports 10V (camera) NOA function, Black Sesame Smart has achieved control of the BOM cost within 3,000 RMB.
Prior to this, Black Sesame Smart has also obtained mass production appointments from several OEMs. For example, Dongfeng Passenger Vehicle's first pure electric sedan and pure electric SUV project, based on the Huashan No. 2 A1000 series, supports functions such as highway assisted driving and memory parking, and is expected to be mass-produced within this year.
The first-generation FEEA3.0 electronic architecture platform project under FAW Hongqi is based on the Black Sesame Smart Huashan No. 2® A1000L series chip to create a non-time-multiplexed, cost-effective driving and parking integrated autonomous driving domain control platform, which will be applied to about 80% of FAW Hongqi's models.
At present, Black Sesame Smart Drive Sensing is based on a single SoC chip A1000L, supports 5V5R and does not need time-division multiplexing, a truly integrated driving and parking integrated solution. At the same time, A1000L and A1000 adopt pin2pin compatible design, which can be extended to 10V5R solution as a platform, which greatly reduces the investment in secondary development.
In the view of Gaogong Intelligent Vehicle Research Institute, unlike NOA, the combination of high-speed and low-speed driving and parking is not only an incremental market opportunity, but also a huge stock upgrade market. At the same time, "the gradual maturity of high-performance chips + software algorithms" drives the integration of low-speed parking and high-speed driving acceleration.
Monitoring data from Gaogong Intelligent Vehicle Research Institute shows that in 2021, the number of passenger cars (excluding imports and exports) in the Chinese market that are equipped with driving ADAS (L1, L2) and parking functions will be 2,098,800 vehicles, and this number will continue to increase to 2,600,200 vehicles in 2022.
Among them, only about 10% have the ability to integrate parking and parking (domain controller, which may be equipped with an independent parking controller). According to the forecast of Gaogong Intelligent Vehicle Research Institute, by 2025, the annual delivery scale of front-mounted standard equipment with integrated driving and parking will be close to 6 million; the market share in high-end intelligent driving segments such as L2 and L2+ will be close to 50%.
At the same time, on this track, suppliers are also trying to carry out market segmentation.
For example, Zhihua Technology, which has cumulatively shipped more than 2 million sets of intelligent driving systems, has launched two solutions: a mid-to-low-end driving and parking integrated domain control system and a high-end driving and parking integrated domain control system.
Among them, the middle and low-level solutions support 1R5V12U sensor access, single SoC time-division multiplexing design, 18-50T AI computing power, and the highest support for high-speed HWA functions. This L2+APA solution has controllable costs and emphasizes the ultimate cost performance.
The high-end mobile and parking integrated domain control system supports 5R10V12U sensor access, high computing power single SoC/multi-SOC design, 200+T AI computing power, and can realize high-speed NOA and low-speed AVP function applications.
According to the monitoring data of Gaogong Intelligent Automobile Research Institute, based on the statistics from January to May this year, the average delivery price of self-owned brand new cars is 141,300 yuan, which means that, except for some flagship models, cost-effectiveness is the first consideration for the selection of core computing platforms in the large-scale market.