Along with cars moving toward electrification and intelligence, the smart cockpit market is gradually gaining prominence. Currently, many Chinese carmakers adopt intelligent cockpit chips from international suppliers, but quite a few Chinese chipmaking startups including SiEngine Technology, Jiefa Technology AutoChips, and SemiDrive Semiconductor are keen on developing homegrown smart cockpit SoCs to meet the robust domestic demand.
According to statistics from IHS Markit, global smart cockpit market demand is estimated to reach US$68.1 billion by 2030, with China alone accounting for US$23.6 billion, making it register the highest penetration rate for smart cockpits in the world.
Over the past two years, the competition in the smart cockpit SoC market has intensified, and currently Qualcomm remains a dominant supplier. The company's SA8155P cockpit chip, modified from its 4G mobile SoC Snapdragon 855, has been incorporated by many Chinese carmakers such as Geely Automobile, Li Auto, SAIC Motor and Great Wall Motors into their vehicle models. MediaTek has also entered cooperation with Nvidia to provide a complete smart cockpit solution for software-defined cars, aiming to explore new business opportunities.
In order to prevent the Chinese smart cockpit chip market from being continuously dominated by major international players, many Chinese companies have started to venture into this field.
Among them, SiEngine Technology in March 2023 announced the mass production and shipment of its self-designed 7nm smart cockpit SOC, dubbed Dragon Eagle No. 1, which was developed with Qualcomm's SA8155P as a reference. Its CEO Wang Kai has said that this chip is now the only Chinese homegrown product able to compete with the counterparts of international vendors, stressing that there will be no Chinese competitors in this field within the next three years.
Jeifa Technology's vice president Ma Wei-hua pointed out that the company has delivered over one million units of its entry-level smart cockpit chip AC8015 developed in house in 2022. He stated the company will manage to boost its market share for smart cockpit chips through promoting the entry-level offering and the mid-to high-end AC8025 SoCs, given that the penetration of the chip segment is estimated to grow to over 60% by 2025 and more than 80% by 2030.
SemiDrive's new-generation X9SP smart cockpit chip is considered as one of the highlights in the Chinese market for such chips. Compared to its predecessor the X9HP, the X9SP SoC not only offers a 2x improvement in CPU performance but also a 1.6x advancement in GPU performance, the company said, stressing that customers using its smart cockpit chips can upgrade from the previous X9HP to X9SP in just one month, enabling rapid mass production of their new vehicle models in approximately nine months.
In addition to the startup fabless chipmakers, many Chinese IC designers, including Huawei HiSilicon, Rockchip Electronics and Unisoc are also gradually shifting their focus from consumer-grade SoCs to automotive chips solutions. For instance, Huawei's Kirin 990A, built on a 7nm process node, boasts an AI computing power of 35TOPS (trillion operations per second) and has been incorporated into its car model series including ARCHFOXαS, Avatr 11, and Aito 5 and 7.
Article translated by Willis Ke
