List of China’s Automotive Chip Companies and Comprehensive Strength Comparison

Currently, the entire automotive chip market has high requirements for safety and reliability, such as AEC-Q testing and ASIL product certification, to achieve functional safety in product development, production, and process management/control. However, most chips in the automotive market are monopolized by foreign manufacturers, such as Renesas, NXP, Infineon, Texas Instruments, Microchip, and STMicroelectronics. Our country is currently facing a situation of insufficient domestic substitution and low self-sufficiency, urgently needing to accelerate breakthroughs.

According to different applications of semiconductors in the automotive field, automotive chips can be classified into memory chips, power chips, analog chips, etc. In this issue, we will share with you the landscape of the domestic automotive-grade chip industry driven by the accelerated process of domestic substitution.

New energy vehicles are the main source of incremental demand for power devices. Among them, the main products with significant increments are IGBT modules, SiC modules, MOSFETs, and GaN products. The newly added power devices are mainly used in key components of the power system, such as main drive inverters, onboard chargers (OBC), and DC-DC converters.

Silicon Motion has begun mass production of electric vehicle main motor drive modules based on self-developed V generation IGBT and FRD for some customers. As of August 2022, the company has achieved a monthly production capacity of 70,000 automotive-grade power modules;

New Clean Energy 12-inch SGT-MOS platform products have successfully entered leading companies in the new energy vehicle sector;

StarPower In the first half of 2022, automotive-grade IGBT modules supported over 500,000 new energy vehicles, with over 200,000 A-class and above models, while automotive-grade SiC MOSFET modules used in passenger car main controllers began large-scale applications.

Computing and control chips are the “eyes” of smart vehicles, mainly consisting of microcontrollers and logic ICs, including main control chips and auxiliary chips. From the perspective of application scenarios, computing chips can be divided into smart cockpit chips and autonomous driving chips, as well as body control chips.

Zhiying Electronics is developing AFE automotive-grade lithium battery analog front-end protection chips, with plans to launch products in the second half of 2024;

Jiefa Technology The first functional safety automotive-grade MCU chip AC7840x has been delivered to multiple benchmark customers and is in large-scale application. It can be widely used in automotive body, cockpit, lighting, new energy, and motor control fields;

Xinchip Technology has obtained ISO 26262 functional safety process certification, AEC-Q100 reliability certification, ISO26262 functional safety product certification, and national secret certification, becoming the first automotive-grade chip company in China to achieve four-in-one certification.

Mainly used for data storage functions, including DRAM (Dynamic RAM), SRAM (Static RAM), FLASH (Flash Memory), etc.

GigaDevice GD552G high-capacity products have passed automotive-grade AEC-Q100 certification, and SPI NOR Flash automotive-grade products are fully available, with the GD25 automotive-grade memory series achieving mass adoption in multiple automotive companies;

Beijing Junzheng In 2022, automotive-grade SRAM and automotive-grade DRAM ranked among the top in the global automotive-grade segment market, and the market sales of automotive-grade Flash chips saw significant growth compared to 2021;

Jucheng Co., Ltd. started from consumer-grade EEPROM and has entered the automotive field, with its automotive-grade EEPROM products now beginning mass supply.

Mainly used to detect and sense external signals, converting the detected information into electrical signals or other required forms to transmit to other devices. Includes CMOS image sensors (CIS), image signal processors (ISP), laser radar chips, etc.

Will Semiconductor utilizes the new generation OX08B40 CMOS image sensor, developed with the help of Xilinx MPSoC and Motovis IP, competing with ON Semiconductor;

Naxin Micro has launched the industry-leading NSR31/33/35 series LDO chips, designed for automotive battery power supply applications;

Qipuwei The XL6600 series is an automotive microcontroller chip that meets AEC-Q100 and ISO26262 automotive safety ASILB. It is suitable for body control (BCM), in-vehicle air conditioning control (HVAC), etc.

Mainly used to send, receive, and transmit communication signals, including baseband chips, RF chips, channel chips, and power line carrier communication chips.

Chenxin CX1860 chip is one of the earliest domestic SoC wireless communication chips supporting vehicle networking C-V2X functions, which has been successfully applied in multiple onboard OBU and roadside RSU products;

National Technology series security chips have been widely applied in T-Box, ETC/OBU, OBD, and other onboard devices;

Allwinner The T7 chip is the first automotive-grade SOC chip launched in China in 2018, supporting multi-functional integration for ADAS and DMS intelligent driving.

Analog chips are applied in various parts of automobiles, including body, instrumentation, chassis, powertrain, and ADAS, mainly divided into signal chain chips and power management chips.

Shengbang Technology Some automotive high-efficiency low-power drive chips have been produced in small batches, with comprehensive performance quality reaching international advanced levels;

Silicon Labs Products have been introduced to the automotive market, with the first automotive-grade high-voltage precision amplifier achieving mass supply.

Automotive power management chips (PMIC) are widely used in automotive smart cockpits, autonomous driving, body electronics, instrumentation and entertainment systems, lighting systems, and BMS, etc.

Shengbang Microelectronics officially launched the AEC-Q100 automotive standard upgrade for voltage reference chips in 2021, with the first voltage reference chip LM431BQ supporting AEC-Q100 automotive standards having been officially delivered to users in large scale;

Jiahua Technology has been applied in various aspects of energy conversion, battery balancing, protection, and dynamic warning in automotive electronic circuits and is gradually being promoted to the market for validation;

Lingxin Technology All automotive-grade product manufacturing plants have IATF16949 qualifications, and all products have passed AEC-Q100 automotive verification, with each product’s production line audited by VDA6.3.

Automotive safety chips belong to a type of automotive-grade chip, mainly including standards such as AEC and ISO 26262, with functions to control the safety, efficiency, and comfort of vehicles.

Shanghai Xintai Mizar automotive safety chip is an automotive SoC-level chip aimed at intelligent connected vehicles, achieving domestically controllable hardware encryption algorithms and passing the reliability tests required by ACE Q100 Grade 1;

Fudan Micro has launched multiple safety chips, which have been widely applied in ETC OBU, TBox, smart cockpits, FOTA, digital keys, smart hardware, metering, accessory certification, copyright protection, etc.