About Automotive Chip
Last year, due to the shortage of chips, global auto giants successively announced plans to reduce production, and the auto industry suffered major setbacks, which may even affect the future market structure. So what is the so-called automotive chip?
Automotive chips, as the name suggests, are chips used in cars. Cars were originally mechanical products, but with the increase in car functions and the use of more high-tech configurations, more and more chips are mounted on cars. From the power system, to the car machine system, to the safety system, we can see a large number of applications of chips. That is what we often call integrated circuits. If the mobile phone chip is the "brain" of this mobile phone, then the car chip is equivalent to the brain of the car.
The current automotive chips are mainly divided into three types: functional chips, power semiconductors, and sensors. The three types of chips serve different purposes, but are all critical to the car. It can be said that the automotive chip has become a core component that is as important as the power system. In the era of electric vehicles, this phenomenon is even more obvious.
1. The function chip (MCU) is also called "micro control unit". If the electronic control system, infotainment system, powertrain system, vehicle motion system and other system functions in the car want to run normally, they all need to use This type of functional chip can be realized, and the most popular "automatic driving system" is also inseparable from functional chips.
2. Power semiconductors are mainly used in automotive power control systems, lighting systems, fuel injection, chassis safety and other systems. Traditional fuel vehicles generally use them in fields such as start-up, power generation, and safety. New energy vehicles require a large number of power semiconductors. To realize the frequent voltage conversion requirements of vehicles, in addition, the support of power semiconductors is indispensable in many parts of electric vehicles.
3. The automotive sensor is the input device of the car computer system. Its function is to convert the information of various working conditions in the running of the car, such as the speed of the car, the temperature of various media, the operating conditions of the engine, etc., into electrical signals and send them to the computer so that The car is in top working condition. Such as oxygen sensors, tire pressure sensors, water temperature sensors, electronic accelerator pedal position sensor,s and so on.
For use in the automotive field, the chip is known as a magnetically coupled transponder system. Magnetically coupled transponder systems are passive in nature. The chip itself does not need a constant power supply, so it does not need to be powered on all the time. Just pass within the range of electromagnetic waves at a frequency of 125 kHz. Under the electromagnetic wave, the chip will generate the originally programmed and coded signal, generally in the range of 1 cm to 15 cm.
Functional chip is the most commonly used type of automotive chip, which mainly refers to processor and controller chips. If a car wants to drive, it needs to carry out various information transmission and data processing, which requires a processor chip to complete, similar to the CPU of a computer. And if a car wants to realize various functions, it needs a complete vehicle control system, vehicle control system. The system includes various components such as a powertrain, driving assistance system, entertainment system, and body electronic system. Each function must correspond to a controller, and the core of these controllers is the chip.
Power semiconductor chips are rarely used. They are mainly responsible for power conversion and are generally used in power supplies and interfaces. Therefore, they are more used in electric vehicles. The core component of electric vehicles, the IGBT chip, is a power semiconductor chip. Judging from the current situation, apart from BYD, other domestic car companies have made little progress in the field of IGBT chips and basically rely on imports.
Sensor chips are used for the collection and transmission of various information, mainly in systems such as radar and airbags. At present, in the electric vehicle chip market, the "laser system" represented by Huawei and the "vision system" represented by Tesla is in a heated debate, and the sensor chip is the core of it.
The global shortage of automotive chips has always sounded the alarm for Chinese auto factories. Otherwise, all the car manufacturing factories in the world should improve car chip creating ability and be responsible for improving car production levels.
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