From knock-off old-man's electric vehicles to industrial giant

Chapter 283 Power Semiconductor Communication UWB 16nm Intelligent Driving Chip
"Holy crap... summoning a car with a gesture, isn't that Iron Man?!"

Yu Nian was stunned.

"I think a snap to unlock would be cooler, and then add a light show... You walk up to the car, snap your fingers to unlock the door, the LED laser headlights in front create a welcome light carpet, and light wings are projected from under the car, how about that?!"

"Wow... this is handsome?!"

-

"No, no, if we were to make a smartwatch, it should also be able to combine the heart rate function of current smartwatches, support accurate GPS positioning and sports data, have a built-in voice assistant, and establish independent communication and connection... At that time, the mobile phone, the car system and daily life will be truly connected, and the car owner's usage scenarios will be firmly locked in," said He Zhiqi, product director.

Once Xu Yi started it, everyone's imagination ran wild.

His gaze was full of satisfaction.

it is good!
They've all learned to answer first!
Those present were no strangers to consumer electronics. Compared to mobile phones, watches are also a good medium, and the sales of smartwatches and smart bands have been growing rapidly with high profit margins.

Both mobile phones and watches can support UWB.

If a shared protocol is used, and "Super Star Flash" is successfully developed, then an exclusive ecosystem can also be built.

Its performance is more than sufficient for consumer-grade applications, and it has even greater potential to be explored in industrial-grade interconnected applications.

"The application scenarios you mentioned are all very good. The next generation of our cars will have the function of automatically opening and closing doors. At that time, we can also do intelligent linkage with mobile phones and wearable devices."

These functions require powerful and precise communication to support them; Bluetooth alone simply cannot achieve this.

Xu Yi made the decision.

If Xingchen wants to continue to move up the value chain, it needs to break with convention and do things that other car companies have never done or cannot do.

Intelligentization is a key factor in breaking through the current limitations.

Traditional car manufacturing giants have the funds and strength, but they are slow to react in terms of intelligent technology. On the one hand, they have been strictly hierarchical for many years, and any intelligent feature costs hundreds of thousands of yuan and requires secondary payment for application.
On the other hand, traditional automakers pay relatively little attention to systems and communications, which are areas where mobile phone brands and internet companies excel, and these are the areas where they have brought about significant changes after entering the automotive industry.

Both the Starry Night L9 and the Brilliant series vehicles are designed with space for automatic door opening and closing modules in their overall vehicle engineering development.

to be honest.

This feature is controversial.

When the idea was first proposed, it was discussed internally. Some pragmatists in the company believed that installing "automatic doors" would be completely useless.

The car door is right there. Whether you press a button to open it automatically or manually pry it open, there is absolutely no difference, giving people the feeling of adding unnecessary details.

If the car door's radar sensors don't work properly, the automatic opening and closing might cause it to bump into something nearby, which would be quite embarrassing.

However, the scenarios Xu Yi subsequently presented convinced them.

Automatic door functionality is not simply about "automatic door opening".

Rather, it's for the sake of "prestige" and "elegance".

All the door handles on the Starry Sky are semi-concealed, retaining the mechanical door opening function. Even with the automatic door function, they do not cut off the traditional door handle. When the user pulls the door handle lightly, it will only pop out a crack at first. Only after the torque is applied will the door open smoothly. It is very elegant.

Secondly, the internal structure also allows the car door to hover and remain stationary at any opening angle!

No matter the slope, angle, or narrow space the vehicle is in, the door can always hover and lock in place.

It also features automatic door closing when the brake is applied, and the doors are designed to prevent falls and pinching, closing with a gentle push.

It retains the original electric suction door design.

It significantly improves the convenience of getting on and off the vehicle and looks very elegant.

These are all genuine "advanced humanistic care functions".

Everyone who's used it raves about it!

……

Some people install an automatic door, but in order to show how amazing the automatic door is, they remove the door handle.

Or perhaps it's an anti-human design to integrate gear shifting into the screen in an attempt to save costs. Even though it's supposed to be automated, it's still more difficult to use than a non-automated system.

Xu Yiyuan called it a heaven-defying thought process.

True advanced automation means that users don't need to make any choices.

It integrates perfectly with the existing mechanical structure, retaining the simplicity and directness of mechanization while maximizing convenience and labor-saving.

The meeting confirmed the implementation of the UWB key project.

Then, all the information about the DW1000 chip and the foreign company called Decawave was also presented on Xu Yi's desktop.

This is a typical chip startup, whose main and core business is UWB chips plus modules and development kits. Last year's financial report showed that it was still in the stage of loss expansion, with annual revenue in the tens of millions of US dollars and a total valuation of only 1.5 million to 2 million US dollars.

This information made Xu Yi's eyes light up.

After all, UWB is not yet widely used in the current industry, which is an opportunity for Xingchen. To acquire UWB technology patents and chip R&D teams, they can directly start with Decawave.

Otherwise, once Apple releases the 11 series in 19 and clarifies the application of UWB communication in the interconnection of the electronic ecosystem, the related industries and chip companies will also see a surge in value within just one year. At that time, the chip technology for ultra-wideband wireless communication will not be priced like this.

Seeing his boss deep in thought while looking at the documents, Zhao Yang assumed he was concerned about the cost, since the proposed plan did indeed seem to have an excessively high cost.

From the BCM controller to multiple UWB anchor points on the vehicle body, the cost of a small batch of samples can reach 1000-1500 per set.

Meanwhile, the cost of a Bluetooth + NFC system at the same time was only two or three hundred yuan.

The difference reached five to seven times.

He quickly spoke up:
"Mr. Xu, the procurement and cost of UWB keys are indeed too high at present, but the main problem is that the economies of scale are too poor."

“I found that Decawave’s platform solutions have a lot of redundancy. The sample cases provided on their official website often require 5-6 UWB anchor points to cover the whole vehicle scenario. There is a lot of room for simplification and cost optimization in the future. In addition, after their financing this year, they have a strong intention to generate profits externally and urgently need practical cases to open up the global market and purchase large orders. We can completely control the discourse on customized platforms.”

Xu Yi raised his head and said with a smile, "No, no, what I want is not the right to customize. You should negotiate with this company first. Since they are short of money, our Xingchen can also invest. It would be best if we could get the chip-related patents for UWB communication in one go."

To be honest.

He has already begun considering overseas acquisitions.

Xingchen has completely achieved domestic production of power semiconductors and has also found customers. The next step is to wait for the yield and process of 6-inch SiC wafers to improve before purchasing equipment for 8-inch production lines from external suppliers.

The international situation is not that tense right now. As long as they are willing to spend money, they can get the relevant equipment. If they really can't buy it later, they can then carry out equipment improvement and reverse engineering.

As for the UWB communication chip, it is a crucial component in connecting vehicles, mobile phones, and the Internet of Things.

Meanwhile, Xu Yi began to consider the matter of developing his own intelligent driving chip.

The intelligent driving and navigation functions of the first-generation Star are almost complete. With its own algorithm architecture, it can start developing its own intelligent driving chip, and then it can truly take control of its own destiny.

After all, the computing power of existing intelligent driving chips is only around 4 to 30 TOPS, and they use mature manufacturing processes of 16nm to 28nm.

Even a few years later, a single Orin chip with a computing power of 200 TOPS will only be an 8nm chip.

The chip space in vehicles is much more abundant than that in mobile phone SoCs.

Therefore, it is entirely possible to create a single computing power chip of 32-64 TOPS using a 16nm process in the early stages.

Even if we don't have 5nm or 8nm... we can always stack them up!

One isn't enough, so try two!

Two isn't enough, stack four!

It mainly uses a powerful brick-flying tactic, so the power consumption is a bit high and the bandwidth is a bit tight, but it's still usable!

This provides 128-256 TOPS of computing power, which is sufficient to drive the initial implementation of intelligent driving in urban scenarios.

If we continue to explore the path of multiple exposures to break through 7 nanometers, then it's really not certain who will be blocking whom on the road to intelligent driving of the whole vehicle.

……

(End of this chapter)