Falling automotive electronics prices, propelled by advances in chip manufacturing and innovations on the design side, are driving a whole new level of demand across the automotive industry.
Innovations that were introduced at the luxury end of the car market over the past couple years already are being implemented in more standard vehicles. The single biggest driver of change in the automotive sectors is electronics, and that trend is expected to continue for the foreseeable future as carmakers push into ever-greater levels of assisted and autonomous driving.
“As more and more affordable electronic equipment trickles down into entry-level vehicles, it is fueling an increase in the demand for in-car electronic devices for numerous applications such as entertainment, navigation, the monitoring of a number of conditions, and for accident prevention,” said Ranjit Adhikary, vice president of marketing at ClioSoft.
The fastest way to build chips for this market is to leverage what already has been created for other chips. But IP used in automotive applications is totally different from consumer applications. It has to function under harsh operating conditions with an expected lifespan of 10 to 15 years. Moreover, IP in vehicles has to adhere to a set of stringent but still evolving regulations, such as the Functional Safety for Automotive standards as defined by ISO 26262.
“Your 55-inch flat screen LED TV in your living room is unlikely to be subjected to a room temperature range outside of 15° to 25° C,” said Tom Wong, director of business development, IP Group at Cadence. “But an infotainment system that resides inside the cabin of an automobile, under normal operating conditions, may see temperatures in the range of 0° C to perhaps 35° C—unless you happen to take your car to Alaska in the winter or to the Mojave desert in the summer. Other automotive applications, such as the ECU that resides in the engine compartment, will see significantly higher temperatures. There is a range of different temperature classifications defined by AEC-Q100 to provide guidance to chip makers for reliability testing and qualification.”
Further, with the emergence of ADAS and autonomous driving, functional safety compliance will become a requirement for automotive SoCs and IP, he said, which is where the ISO 26262 functional standard and its related ASIL levels are relevant. “IP vendors increasingly are being asked to deliver IP that meets a certain level of ASIL readiness. Most of the Tier 1 IP vendors and foundries are responding to this challenge and requirement, and they are delivering SoCs and IP that are ASIL-B compliant. More stringent systems may have to support ASIL-C/D readiness, as well.”