Semiconductor, IT, and vehicle manufacturers compete for the automotive electronics market

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Semiconductor, IT, and vehicle manufacturers compete for the automotive electronics market [Copy link]

Automotive electronics - a rising star driving the rapid growth of the semiconductor market

　　Not long ago, Freescale and STMicroelectronics (ST), the world's top two automotive semiconductor chip giants, jointly announced in Beijing that they have decided to jointly establish a CPU development department for automotive electronic control systems and share intellectual property rights in order to compete for the global automotive semiconductor market. The joint development department of the two parties will be headquartered in Munich, Germany, and its main development content includes microprocessors for automotive electronic control systems, semiconductor transistors, and automotive navigation systems.

　　Industry insiders believe that one of the reasons why STMicroelectronics is vigorously developing automotive semiconductors is that by producing automotive semiconductors, it can obtain technology with more reliable quality (reliability and high temperature resistance, etc.). Automakers have much higher quality requirements than other fields. By establishing mass production technology for automotive semiconductors, the quality of other products can also be improved. Another reason is that the automotive business is very stable. Although automotive semiconductors have very strict requirements on price and quality, once the products are adopted, there is a demand for long-term orders. Adding such products to the product lineup will help stabilize performance.

　　As a high-growth area in the future, automotive semiconductors have become the market that STMicroelectronics pays the most attention to. In fact, automotive semiconductors account for 14% of the company's sales, which is much higher than the average of 5% in the entire semiconductor industry. This is a strong signal that the automotive industry will become a new driving force in the global semiconductor market for at least the next 10 years, and the big cake of automotive semiconductors will also become a new highlight for businesses to make profits.

　　As one of the technical foundations supporting modern automobile engineering, automotive semiconductor technology plays an irreplaceable and important role in solving problems such as automobile performance, environmental protection, energy, and safety. According to a recent survey report by Cleveland Market Consulting Company in the United States, the global automotive semiconductor market size reached US$16.5 billion in 2005, an increase of 7.3% over 2004, and it is expected that the annual revenue of automotive semiconductors will reach US$26 billion in 2012.

　　The proportion of automotive electronic products used in automobiles is increasing, and electronic products are gradually becoming important components of automobiles. At the same time, the trend of semiconductor solutions replacing mechanical components is becoming increasingly obvious. In particular, the widespread application of semiconductor devices in automotive electronic products has enabled automobiles to have multiple functions such as transportation, entertainment and communication. The increasingly stringent requirements for automobile reliability, safety and exhaust emission control will also promote the development of the automotive semiconductor industry.

　　The application of automotive semiconductor devices is mainly concentrated in four major areas: automotive powertrain system, chassis electronic control system, body electronic control system, and information communication system. The market demand for automotive semiconductor devices in these four systems accounts for 86.4% of the total demand for automotive semiconductors.

　　Toyota has set a goal of reducing domestic car accidents in Japan by half by 2020, and will gradually design cars into "electronic cocoons" to achieve this goal, that is, using hundreds of sensors to surround the vehicle, and using actuators to electronically control the brakes and steering wheels based on the information from these sensors. As a result, various sensors, processors that can quickly process a large amount of information from sensors, and high-voltage large-scale integrated circuits that drive actuators will all grow rapidly.

　　IT manufacturers are rushing to enter the automotive electronics market

　　More and more IT manufacturers are linking the reliability of automobiles with the brand value of the components they produce. Sharp said that in addition to operating the company's flagship product display, it has entered the automotive conductor component market for the first time. It will develop a CMOS sensor with a dynamic range of up to 140dB and strive to mass-produce it in 2007. The sensor is mainly used to provide support for car driving, expand and improve the driver's field of vision, and can display clear-toned images even when exposed to sunlight at the exit of a highway tunnel. Sharp said that some car manufacturers have begun to explore the possibility of improving car safety through this product. Since each car may be equipped with 6 CMOS sensors, the company hopes that it will develop into a large market larger than digital cameras and mobile phones. Sharp plans to strive to capture 1/3 of the market in 2006.

　　Sharp's entry into the automotive conductor component market is not just because the market is huge. They believe that if Sharp's products can be adopted by automobile manufacturers with extremely strict quality requirements, it will prove that the quality of its products, including sensors, is very high. Currently, Sharp is promoting a strategy to increase the company's brand value by seizing the automotive conductor component market.

　　Panasonic Electric Industry is currently stepping up research on SiC (silicon carbide) components. The project is mainly aimed at developing new semiconductor technologies in the automotive field. The industry expects that automobiles are expected to promote the trend of low-cost SiC technology in two aspects. First, automobiles need semiconductor components that can work normally at high temperatures above 120°C, and such components are likely to increase in the future. Under high temperature conditions, silicon components require heat dissipation devices, while SiC components can be used normally without heat dissipation. From a cost perspective, the practical threshold of SiC will be significantly lowered; and in terms of high current drive between hundreds of A and 1kA, SiC is more suitable than silicon for electric drive circuits such as electric vehicles, fuel cell vehicles, and hybrid electric vehicles.

　　In addition, NEC, a Japanese electrical company with a history of more than 30 years of developing automotive conductor components, is developing not only automotive conductor components but also semiconductor components for PCs and digital home appliances.

　　Vehicle manufacturers also want to get a piece of the pie.　
　
　　The industry believes that more and more car manufacturers will enter the semiconductor field.

　　In recent years, Honda Motor Company has been recruiting people in semiconductor majors including "thin-film solar cell development", "power generation element component development", "image sensor development", "electrode material development", and "inverter and converter manufacturing technology". The recruitment advertisements released by Toyota also involve professional fields such as "image recognition technology" and "power electronics core components and semiconductor development". Among them, 6 out of 13 positions are related to semiconductor component technology.

　　Toyota has proposed the slogan of self-production of core components two years ago, and currently has a semiconductor mass production plant mainly for development and trial production. Its mass production scale in 2005 is equivalent to 200,000 pieces per month in terms of 125 mm chips. The plant mainly conducts trial production of exciters and motor drive LSIs, and has started mass production of motor drive IGBTs (insulated gate bipolar transistors) for the hybrid car "PRIUS" since 1997. As long as these experiences are used to expand varieties and specifications, it will not be difficult to achieve full-scale mass production.

　　Highly anticipated Chinese market

　　A survey report by Cleveland Market Consulting Company pointed out that the improvement of China's domestic automobile demand market and the increasing production capacity of automobile electronic parts will drive the electronic parts market around the automobile industry to become more active. In the next five years, China's automobile-related semiconductor market will grow at an average rate of 26.5%, and by 2012, China's automobile chip market is expected to account for 12% of the world.

　　China's automobile industry has huge potential market advantages, such as labor costs, the number of engineering and technical personnel, and production potential, which are unmatched by developed countries. With the acceleration of globalization, China will surely become a global production base for complete vehicles and parts. The continuous growth of China's automobile production and sales in recent years has brought opportunities for the development of domestic automotive electronic semiconductor device manufacturers.