The smart cockpit track is ushering in a new wave of chip replacement.
Compared with the field of intelligent driving, the cockpit host chip market is not "sexy", but the huge stock replacement and upgrade opportunities should not be underestimated.
According to the monitoring data of Gaogong Intelligent Automobile Research Institute, from January to June 2023 in the Chinese market (excluding imports and exports), 8.5613 million pre-installed standard central control entertainment systems for passenger cars will be delivered, and the penetration rate of pre-installed standard equipment has exceeded 90%. , reaching 92.13%.
Among them, the proportion of hosts that support the Internet of Vehicles function has exceeded 80%, reaching 83.03%. This means that the need to support more in-vehicle entertainment functions, networking content and services, OTA iterations, and the computing power requirements for core SoCs are all increasing.
For example, as a SAIC-GM-Wuling strategic pure electric crossover model, Baojun Yunduo is equipped with LingOS 2.0 system for the first time, and for the first time uses a 15.6-inch LED large screen + MediaTek MT8666 chip (12nm process), supports intelligent voice interaction, and remote car control by mobile APP and other functions.
In terms of actual performance parameters, MT8666 adopts the design of 4 Cortex-A73 large cores plus 4 Cortex-A53 small cores, and its computing power is about 54% higher than the entry-level SA6155P of Qualcomm's third-generation cockpit platform, reaching 56.8K DMIPS.
The positioning of Baojun Yunduo at the 100,000 yuan level, coupled with the fact that MT8666 surpasses the solutions of TI, NXP, and Renesas of traditional mainstream models in terms of process technology, CPU computing power and other data indicators, may accelerate market replacement and upgrading.
At the same time, a group of local Chinese cockpit SoC solution providers are also joining the market competition. In particular, major brand OEMs have successively entered the cycle of research and development of new models and remodeling of old models since last year, and the window period for switching suppliers has opened.
For example, Ziguang Zhanrui released the car-grade 6nm process processor in April this year, with an 8-core design, including one 2.7GHz A76 large core, three 2.3GHz A76 medium cores, and four 2.0GHz A55 small cores.
Among them, the CPU computing power is 93K DMIPS, and the GPU adopts NATT 4-core @850Mhz, with 217 GFLOPS floating-point computing power; the NPU computing power reaches 8TOPS, which is equivalent to Qualcomm 8155.
According to the information disclosed by Ziguang Zhanrui, in addition to A7870, there are two other cost-effective cockpit SoCs, namely A7862, a 4G high-performance car-machine chip solution, and A8581, an octa-core 4G car-machine chip solution.
At the same time, so far, Ziguang Zhanrui is the fourth supplier besides Huawei, Qualcomm, and MediaTek that has both cockpit computing and vehicle communication chip mass production and delivery capabilities.
In addition, Jiefa Technology, a subsidiary of NavInfo, also released the AC8015 integrated light cockpit solution, and took the lead in successfully mass-producing and launching a self-owned brand model, becoming the center of traditional automotive central control host chip giants such as NXP, Renesas, and TI. A low-end alternative.
According to the company's previous public information, the new generation of smart cockpit chips AC8015 and AC8257 have already been appointed by a number of passenger car and commercial vehicle customers for new mass production models, and most projects will enter mass production in 2023. At the same time, a new generation of high-performance smart cockpit chips is under development.
At the same time, since last year, SAIC, Chery, Nissan, Changan, Honda, Dongfeng, Volkswagen, Ideal and other brand models have begun to carry the "Cabin Core" X9 series of Xinchi Technology on the car.
X9 series, including X9E, X9M, X9H, X9HP, and X9U, are configured with different numbers and performances of CPUs and CPU cores, with a maximum computing power of 100K DMIPS, covering LCD instruments, central control navigation, high-end smart cockpits, etc. A cockpit application scenario.
At this year's Shanghai Auto Show, the all-scenario cockpit processor X9SP was officially unveiled. Compared with the previous generation X9HP, the CPU performance was increased by 2 times (12-core Arm Cortex-A55 processor, 100KDMIPS), and the GPU performance was increased by 1.6 times (220GFLOPS). A new NPU is installed to better support DMS, OMS, APA and other functions.
While the performance has been significantly improved, X9SP and X9HP maintain hardware Pin-To-Pin compatibility and software compatibility. It can be smoothly upgraded from X9HP to X9SP in one month, and rapid mass production of models can be achieved in about 9 months. Optimize costs to a certain extent, and at the same time greatly reduce R&D investment.
At the same time, Xinchi Technology also launched an integrated cabin and parking solution based on X9U, which realizes the integration of smart cockpit, 360 surround view and parking functions on a single chip, and has a built-in AI acceleration unit for functions such as parking space recognition and obstacle detection. Assisted parking.
In April of this year, Lynk & Co's new SUV, Lynk & Co 08, was launched. As a product that focuses on intelligent networking, this car is equipped with two 7-nanometer car-level smart cockpit chips "Dragon Eagle No. ".
This car-grade smart cockpit chip "Dragon Eagle No. 1" designed based on the 7nm process (compared to Qualcomm 8155) has a high-performance computing cluster with 8-core CPU, 14-core GPU, and 8 TOPS AI computing power independent NPU.
In addition, its audio and video processing capability can support up to 7 screens of high-definition image output and 12 channels of video signal access, and it is the first in the industry to be equipped with dual HiFi 5 DSP processors.
At the same time, it supports the industry's first 92-inch huge sky screen HUD with a resolution of 2K, real-scene navigation covering three lanes, and supports cross-device viewing and playing games on mobile phones, further providing an immersive cockpit experience.
Furthermore, the 16 TOPS computing power of the dual "Dragon Eagle No. 1" supports L0-L2 assisted driving functions including APA assisted parking, RPA remote parking and other full-scenario parking, and is the first in the industry to realize the integration of cabin and parking. landing. Hongqi, Geely and other models will be mass-produced one after another.
Traditional platforms such as NXP, TI, and Renesas have already shown a trend of "sunset". For example, NXP has invested its main resources in the high computing power SoC of the central control domain (service gateway or central vehicle control unit); TI is the smart driving platform that focuses on TDA4.
Some people in the industry said that at present, for cockpit chip companies, the current moment is indeed an excellent "window period". On the one hand, car companies have many different needs, and functions are still evolving; on the other hand, under the trend of multi-domain integration, chip capability reuse (performance improvement) is also critical.
At the same time, the smart cockpit is entering the superposition cycle of "replacement upgrade" and "cost reduction and efficiency increase" of key computing platforms. This is particularly prominent in the Chinese market.
According to sources, at present, on the two platforms of Qualcomm 8295 and 8255, car companies have begun to choose the latter because the cost of 8295 is too high.
The trend of fierce competition is even more obvious. Monitoring data show that as of the end of June this year, the price of models equipped with Qualcomm 8155 in the Chinese passenger car market has dropped to 100,000 yuan.
"Smart cockpit track has shown a trend of SoC diversification." From the perspective of industry insiders, from the basic central control entertainment, cockpit domain control to central control, from the integration of cabin and parking to the integration of cabin and driving, different scenarios will have different Market structure.
For example, in the cockpit domain controller track, the high-performance SoC market is in an incremental cycle.
According to the monitoring data of Gaogong Intelligent Vehicle Research Institute, in the first quarter of 2023, 466,500 new passenger cars equipped with standard cockpit domain controllers will be delivered in the Chinese market (excluding imports and exports), a year-on-year increase of 24.93%, and the pre-installation rate will be 11.38% %; compared with 8.66% last year.
According to the statistical caliber of the Chinese market in 2022, in terms of the cockpit domain controller installation rate, 34% of the models with 300,000 to 350,000 yuan, but less than 8% of the models with less than 300,000 yuan.