Industry insiders: Chinese start-ups have made a breakthrough in the field of on-board IC

Chinese start-ups have played an important role in developing on-board IC for applications such as smart cockpit, ADAS (advanced driving assistance system) and self-driving, but are expected to face huge competitive challenges over the next five years, according to DIGITIMES.

Core Technology first launched the SE1000 intelligent cockpit multimedia SoC based on 7nm technology in December 2021, which is the standard product of Qualcomm SA8155P, and will begin mass production in the second half of 2022, the report said.

At present, core technology has completed the testing of the SE1000 and won the opportunity for Geely to adopt the SoC in its new models. In addition, core technology also cooperates with China Desai Group, Chengmai Technology, Chuefei Technology and Haiwei Technology to promote the application of SE1000.

Jefa Technology has also been committed to the development of intelligent cockpit SoC and released the fifth generation model AC8025, which optimizes video output and combines audio solutions based on DSP (Digital signal processing).

China's smart cockpit market will grow to 107.2 billion yuan ($15.9 billion) in 2025, 2.14 times that in 2020, according to ICV Tank in Hong Kong, China.

According to the report, Horizon, Cambrian, Xinchi Technology and Black Sesame are all focused on on-board IC for self-driving.

Among them, Horizon is the first company to begin mass production of on-board high-performance computing IC for automakers, which can technically provide self-driving IC solutions for L2 to L4. "Journey 5" is a series of artificial intelligence inference processors developed by Horizon, which has been adopted by BYD and other Chinese automakers.

Cambrian plans to launch L2 autopilot IC and L4 autopilot IC in 2022-2023, while Xichi Technology will launch smart driving SoC with computing power up to 200TOPS (trillions of calculations per second) in the fourth quarter of 2022.

In addition, Black Sesame has launched "Huashan II A1000", which is the only domestic IC design company supporting L3 and above autopilot IC.