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In recent years, the rapid development of the "new four modernizations" of electrification, intelligence, networking, and sharing in the automotive industry is driving a comprehensive transformation of the automotive industry. Cars are transitioning from traditional mechanical products to intelligent terminals for mobile travel services.

From the current trend, as the electrification of cars gradually matures, intelligence has become the core indicator of automotive capabilities and the focus of competition for car companies in the next step.

Against the backdrop of increasing demand for automotive intelligence, the innovation and development of key automotive electronic technologies have become an important force in promoting the automotive industry. Some independent chip manufacturers are also accelerating their layout, entering the mainstream market, and achieving a "core" breakthrough in the intelligent automotive industry.

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Intelligent Cockpit Welcomes New Changes

As the most easily understood and perceived part by users, the intelligent cockpit has become the main direction for car companies to take the lead. The upgrade of the driving experience brought by the intelligent cockpit is gradually becoming one of the important factors for consumers to consider when purchasing vehicles.

According to research by iResearch, among young people aged 25-35, 51% said that the level of cockpit intelligence is an important reference factor for their car purchase. The increased attention of consumers to intelligent cockpits has driven the rapid increase in their penetration rate. IHS Markit data shows that the penetration rate of intelligent cockpits in the Chinese market in 2020 was 48.8%, and it is expected to reach more than 75% by 2025.

The development of intelligent cockpits gradually increases the demand for the computing power, performance, cost, and security of underlying chips. In the field of intelligent cockpit chips, the Qualcomm 8155 "internet celebrity product" has emerged, and many models have also been equipped and operated.

However, as pointed out by the research report of Essence Securities, with the continuous increase in the penetration rate of cockpit intelligence, the main machine factory needs to further balance performance, cost, and reliability for different models, and the selection of intelligent cockpit chips is gradually showing differentiation and diversification. Manufacturers such as Xinchi Technology have also emerged, and domestic intelligent cockpit chips are facing an opportunity window.

During this Shanghai Auto Show, the automotive chip company Xinchi Technology released the full-scene intelligent cockpit chip X9SP, achieving a comprehensive upgrade of the intelligent cockpit platform performance.

Xinchu Technology co-founder and director Qiu Yujing believes that a good intelligent cockpit chip product needs to have the ability to cover all scenarios. In addition to including intelligent cockpit functions such as LCD instruments, central control navigation, HUD, 360 panoramic view, assisted parking, DMS, voice/gesture recognition, etc., it also needs to cover the application of intelligent cockpits in the next 3-5 years. X9SP is a full-scene cockpit processor for future mainstream intelligent cockpit applications. It is reported that X9SP is designed for "one core and multiple screens" intelligent cockpits, and a single chip can support the above rich application scenarios.The more features the intelligent cockpit is equipped with, the higher the performance requirements for the chip naturally become. It is reported that compared to the previous generation X9HP chip, the X9SP processor's CPU performance has been doubled, reaching 100KDMIPS, and the GPU performance has been increased by 1.6 times, bringing users a more dazzling instrument panel and a smoother Android system. The X9SP also integrates the Arm China "Yi Ji" X1 NPU optimized for automotive application scenarios, with an AI processing capability of 8TOPS, better supporting functions such as DMS, OMS, and APA.

In addition, the X9SP further improves the chip integration, with a built-in automotive-grade ISP capable of processing up to 1Gpixel/s, supporting 8-megapixel camera input. The X9SP's built-in independent safety island integrates a dual-core lockstep Cortex-R5F CPU with a frequency of up to 800MHz, allowing the entire cockpit function to be implemented in a single chip without the need for an external MCU, effectively saving system costs.

Hardware and software compatibility helps customers seamlessly upgrade and iterate.

The intelligent cockpit is a key link for car companies to achieve differentiated competition. However, the automotive cockpit is a very complex system, and many chips may take 2-3 years from the start to mass production. In this case, the speed of iteration and mass production is very important for car companies. The speed of intelligent cockpit updates and iterations depends on the iteration speed of the core chip.

In this regard, XinChi can provide customers with an agile development and rapid iteration option. The X9 series has been mass-produced in large scale, covering different models from high to low configuration. Based on this, the X9SP and X9HP maintain hardware Pin-To-Pin compatibility and software compatibility, which is convenient for customers to upgrade smoothly from the mass production design of X9HP to X9SP, and it can be upgraded from X9HP to X9SP in just one month. It is possible to achieve the configuration of different models' performance requirements by pasting X9SP and X9HP chips on the same set of hardware and software design, maximizing cost optimization, and thus helping customers achieve rapid and seamless upgrades and mass production.

On the day of the press conference, Desay SV Automotive and XinChi signed a strategic cooperation agreement and will be the first to launch the X9SP globally.

"Even for customers who have never used XinChi products, XinChi's stable platform can also help customers achieve mass production and launch to the market within 9 months," said Chen Shujie, vice president of XinChi Technology. Just like playing chess, you need to make a layout and think clearly about the next few steps, so that each subsequent move will be truly feasible.

The automotive industry chain is very complex. The realization of automotive intelligence depends not only on the underlying chip but also on the operating system, toolchain, upper-level applications, and algorithms. It is reported that XinChi Technology has completed adaptation with many leading automotive software ecosystem partners at home and abroad, such as QNX, Unity, Kanzi, QT, AliOS, Wutong Car Alliance, Tian Tong, etc. XinChi is the first and currently the only domestic chip company to enter QNX's product support list. At the same time, solution providers such as Chengmai, Guangting, and Xintu can provide complete hardware and software solutions and design services to help customers achieve mass production more quickly.

Safety is the top priority for automobiles.

Performance advantages and iteration speed are important, but safety is always the top priority for automotive chips.

Unlike consumer chips, mobile phone chips can be restarted after a crash, but if the automotive chips responsible for key parts such as automotive instruments or intelligent driving crash, it may cause serious safety accidents. Therefore, whether it is consumers or car companies, the most concerned issue is safety. No matter how high the chip's computing power and performance are, if they cannot meet the automotive requirements, car companies dare not use them.XinChi Technology has always adhered to a vehicle core design concept centered on life safety and is currently the first "four-in-one" vehicle specification chip enterprise in China, which includes AEC-Q100 reliability certification, ISO26262 ASIL D functional safety process certification, ISO26262 ASIL B functional safety product certification, and national secret information security product certification. The newly released X9SP intelligent cockpit processor also follows strict vehicle specification standards in design, meeting the AEC-Q100 Grade 2 reliability requirements and ISO 26262 ASIL B functional safety requirements.

To further meet the information security needs of vehicles, X9SP also has a built-in high-performance HSM, meeting the various information security requirements of domestic and foreign car manufacturers for digital signatures, encrypted communication, etc.

Autonomous driving returns to rationality

While the intelligent cockpit is rapidly developing, intelligent driving is also very popular.

BYD Chairman Wang Chuanfu recently said, "Unmanned driving is all nonsense, making a false appearance, that is all deception, it is a new suit for the emperor." He believes that the main direction for the future is still advanced assisted driving, which requires the driver to hold the steering wheel, and the application scenarios of unmanned driving in special road conditions are still very few. ADAS algorithms and high-level assisted driving have been deified under the influence of capital, and the market will gradually return to rationality.

It can be understood that the development of technology must serve the actual needs of users, and it should be rationally viewed with the needs of users and the feasibility of the environment. Qiu Yujing also said in an interview: "We believe that for a considerable period in the future, this (L2+) will be the main focus, continuously improving the user experience of assisted driving, helping everyone to alleviate driving fatigue and increase driving safety. It will take quite a long time to achieve unmanned driving in a completely open scenario. This is not only a technical issue, but also involves many ethical, moral, and legal issues."

XinChi Technology has launched the V9P, the most integrated L2+ single-chip mass production solution. The CPU performance is up to 70KDMIPS, the GPU reaches 200GFLOPS, and the overall AI performance is up to 20TOPS. On a single chip, it can achieve various functions of mainstream L2+ ADAS such as AEB (Automatic Emergency Braking), ACC (Adaptive Cruise Control), LKA (Lane Keeping Assistance), and auxiliary parking, memory parking functions, and can also integrate a driving recorder and high-definition 360-degree panoramic view. V9P has an independent safety island built-in, which can achieve a true single-chip driving and parking solution without an external MCU, effectively saving system costs.

Qiu Yujing mentioned that since the beginning of this year, the price pressure in the entire automotive industry has been very large, "In the past, hardware was pre-buried, and now it is not used and it will be needed in the future, in fact, we are now seeing everyone start to return to rationality."

Central computing architecture is the trend of the times

With the further acceleration of the intelligent transformation of automobiles, the overall electronic and electrical architecture of the vehicle is gradually moving from the domain controller architecture to the era of the central computing architecture.Due to the full-scenario layout, XinChi Technology is rapidly advancing towards a central computing architecture. After taking the lead in releasing the central computing architecture SCCA1.0 in April 2022, XinChi officially released the second-generation central computing architecture SCCA2.0.

XinChi's second-generation central computing architecture SCCA2.0 vehicle model display

Compared to the first generation, SCCA2.0 is equipped with the latest X9SP and V9P processors, with a significant overall performance improvement.

The high-performance central computing unit CPU has a total computing power of 300KDMIPS. As the brain of future vehicles, it can achieve intelligent cockpits, autonomous driving, and whole vehicle body control, and provide high-speed network interaction and storage sharing services, as well as adding secure and reliable computing power, integrating G9 and E3 for high-reliability computing.

The high-reliability intelligent vehicle control unit, as the vehicle's cerebellum, uses the G9 processor and E3 MCU to achieve the integration and intelligent control of the chassis and power.

Four regional controllers, with the high-performance and high-reliability E3 multi-core MCU at the core, achieve data interaction and various control functions within the four physical areas of the vehicle.

The six core units are interconnected using 10G/1Gbps high-performance vehicle Ethernet, and a redundant architecture is adopted, which not only ensures low latency and high-traffic data exchange but also ensures safety.

Under the full-scenario layout, XinChi Technology continues to upgrade the core electronic and electrical architecture of the automotive industry, ushering in a new round of competition in the smart car market.

In conclusion, it is not difficult to see that the transformation of the automotive industry drives the upgrade of the overall industry value chain. Some data predicts that by 2030, the penetration rate of vehicle intelligence in our country will reach 70%, and the content and importance of automotive chips will increase exponentially.It cannot be ignored that the low domestic chip autonomy rate in our country has become a major challenge in the second half of automotive intelligence. At the same time, against the backdrop of the last round of "chip shortage tide", car companies have started to re-think the supply chain model, which has also created opportunities for domestic chip companies to break through.

As a leading domestic automotive chip supplier, Xinchi Technology is fully embracing centralized computing and ushering in the "full chip intelligence" era, striving to achieve new breakthroughs in the current opportunity window.