According to Hubei Daily, Zhang Fanwu, Chief Engineer of Intelligent Technology at Dongfeng Motor’s Global Innovation Center, stated that the DF30, the first fully domestically produced automotive-grade high-performance MCU chip, has completed its first tape-out (trial production) verification, and automotive-grade validation is about to begin, with mass production planned for next year, breaking the monopoly of foreign manufacturers.In 2022, Dongfeng Motor led the establishment of the Hubei Automotive-grade Chip Industry Technology Innovation Consortium, in collaboration with eight enterprises including China Information Technology and Binary Semiconductor Co., Ltd.Dongfeng Motor proposed the requirements, with downstream companies responsible for design, manufacturing, etc., creating a complete chip industry chain.Last November, at the 2024 conference of the Hubei Automotive-grade Chip Industry Technology Innovation Consortium, the DF30 chip and its AUTOSAR-compliant OS (Operating System) and MCAL (Microcontroller Abstraction Layer) were officially released.It is reported that the DF30 chip is China’s first fully domestically produced, self-controllable high-performance automotive-grade MCU chip, the industry’s first based on an open-source RISC-V multi-core architecture, developed using domestic 40nm automotive-grade technology, with a fully domestic closed-loop process, and achieving a functional safety level of ASIL-D.
This chip features four major characteristics: “high performance, strong controllability, ultra safety, and extreme reliability,” and has passed 295 rigorous tests, including basic tests, stress tests, and application tests. It is compatible with domestically developed AutoSAR automotive software operating systems, has a complete development environment, and can be widely used in power control, chassis, electronic information, driving assistance, and other fields, filling a domestic gap in this area.
Zhang Fanwu stated that a typical car has 25 to 50 controllers, requiring 500 to 1000 chips, of which 90% have been domestically produced. The MCU chip falls within the remaining 10%.
This collaborative R&D model is an exploration within the industry and was not initially smooth. During the collaboration, Dongfeng Motor proposed using a key module in the chip, while the design company insisted on using a different module instead. The first tape-out verification failed due to the absence of this key module, preventing the development of a basic function for the controller using this chip.“What we are doing is creating something from scratch, with no templates to refer to. Everyone has their own ideas, which leads to such collisions,” said Zhang Fanwu.
Source: Hubei Daily, CIC Integrated Circuits, copyright belongs to the original author.Disclaimer: This article is a reprint for communication and learning purposes only. The purpose of reprinting this article is to convey more information, and copyright belongs to the original author. If there are any copyright issues with the videos, images, or text used in this article, please contact the editor for resolution.END
