In response, some US Congress criticized the government, and Rogers, the Republican leader of the Military Commission, urged these permits. Under the pressure, a spokesman for the US Department of Commerce said on August 27 that the US government did not relax or adjust the policy.
At this point, an important issue that has been ignored in the past two years floats to the water: Huawei has vigorously entered the automotive industry, and to be an incremental parts supplier in the automotive field. Domain is stuck in the neck?
The answer is possible, but it is not so pessimistic.
At present, there are no obvious signs that the United States has signs of loose policies for Huawei. To completely get rid of the shadow of the stuck neck, the most reliable way is, of course, the most difficult road is to gradually build the road of domestic capabilities.
At present, in addition to internal self -developed EDA software projects in the chip field, Huawei has a number of 14NM car chips adopting domestic production lines to advance.
01
Huawei has predicted and deployed in advance
Huawei Auto chips are subject to people, and they are the same reason as mobile phone chips, but because the car chip has a certain controllable production capacity in China, this leaves room for domestic replacement.
Popular understanding involves safety. The difficulty of chip used on cars is not in the process. Instead, it is higher than the car regulation level.
Auto chips are mainly divided into three categories, one is functional chips, such as autonomous driving systems, engines, chassis and body control chips; the second is a power semiconductor, which is the chip responsible for power conversion; the third is a sensor chip, such as using a car radar , Airbags, tire pressure monitoring, etc.
Unlike consumer electronics, the car chip has a high degree of tolerance such as temperature, humidity, dust, life, and stability. The specifications of automotive electronic components, the industry is called car -level, car -level electronic components are selling high, and the requirements are high. This increases the difficulty of manufacturing of automobile chips.
Taking life span as an example, the life of the car-level chip requires at least 15 years. Compared with the consumer electronics chip life, the life of the consumer electronic chip is 1-3 years; the car regulating chip needs to withstand the temperature difference of the minimum minimum of about minus 40 degrees Celsius to about 155 degrees Celsius. However, consumer electronics can generally be used in zero degrees Celsius to 40 degrees Celsius.
In addition, the chip used on the car also requires a long time for research and development and verification, and the development time may exceed one year. If you want to start research and development to push to the market, at least three years. There are also some car -regulatory chips that need to be produced on the production line that passed the authentication of the car regulations.
Because the car does not have the actual restrictions on the size, the process that the car chip is used is generally not high. The difficulty is whether it can meet the auto -level certification. This requires high requirements and requires repeated verification. In terms of uniformly sealing testing, a car -level sealing test line adds more links than ordinary packaging tests, such as inspection of welding lines, reliability screening, etc. Many products need high temperature and low temperature testing during the testing stage.
Huawei has positioned itself as a supplier of intelligent incremental components in automobiles, mainly providing car companies with "autonomous driving" and "smart cockpit" solutions. These are the two types of chips needed by Huawei's car business.
To build a chip control ability, it means that neither chip design and manufacturing of the above two areas cannot be threatened by US sanctions.
It is reported that the US Department of Commerce will allow suppliers to provide Huawei with a car screen and sensor chip. The reporter of "Finance" has confirmed that the display chip is currently not difficult to encounter. Control ability.
A industry insider who has been engaged in semiconductor sensor chip for a long time told Caijing reporter that taking sensor conditioning chips as an example, this field is basically monopolized by international giants, such as TI, Yingfei Ling, Ruisa, etc.; Second, such chips, such chips High requirements for power consumption, speed, and accuracy are high. From the first mass production to debugging, it usually takes 7-8 iteration.
In addition, chip design needs to use EDA software from American technology.
Even with a technology company with great R & D capabilities and industrial chain numbers such as Huawei, this situation is unsolved in the short term.
EDA, is regarded as the "mother of chip", refers to the functional design of the oversized large -scale integrated circuit chip through the computer -assisted design software. The design link includes the function design, comprehensive, verification, physical design of the chip. At present, the global EDA market About 80%of them were occupied by SynopSys, Cadence and Mentor Graphics, all of which are American companies. Therefore, this is also the most important and stuck neck in the process of national production of the Chinese chip industry chain.
At present, some EDA companies in China have appeared, but a senior expert in the EDA field pointed out to Caijing reporter that at present, many practical applications in China stay in the links of IC simulation verification, and other links are still in research and development.
Huawei is not waiting. "Finance" reporter learned from a person close to Huawei that Huawei has been advancing the confidential project of self -built EDA.
The EDA process is complicated and it takes a long time to accumulate. Even the EDA giant SynopSys also forms the current scale and status through long -term research and development and continuous acquisition. The above -mentioned people who are insiders say that while Huawei's self -study, Huawei may also build an independent EDA system through acquisitions and integration.
Huawei's layout on EDA can also be seen from its layout of Hubble's investment. EDA is one of the key areas of Hubble Investment. Public information shows that from the second half of 2020 to early 2021, Hubble invested in three EDAs. The company, Jiu Tong Fang Microelectronics, Wuxi Flying Electronics and Core Software.
Another informed Huawei employee told Caijing reporter that at the end of this year, the Fox Alpha S Huawei and BAIC will have 1,000 formal cities, and the most important car chip Kirin 990A in these cars cannot currently be autonomous. Controlled, it is still the inventory that was reserved before the United States ban fully took effect last year.
According to Huawei internal planning, the 5,000 polar fox Alpha S will use domestic alternative chips next year. By 2023, domestic chips will be fully used.
For Huawei, the current MCU chip can be used for domestic replacement. At present, on the OLED screen drive chip, the 28nm process product of Huawei's foundry has entered mass production and used for the 28nm process for cars for cars. There will be no major difficulty in mass production, and the 14nm chip process is gradually mature.
If everything goes well and before the inventory is consumed, Huawei can have the ability to produce certain vehicle -level chips controlled. However, this process will also be the process of continuously catching up with the international leading level of Huawei and other Chinese companies. By then, the leading level in the industry will have entered the chip competition of 3nm technology, and there is still a gap between domestic and foreign chip manufacturing technology gaps.
In other words, under the shadow of the US government's sanctions, Huawei's only way is to build the controllable industry chain with a relatively long time. Only in this way can Huawei achieve the established strategic goals and among the supply of first -class car parts. Merchants will be very difficult.
02
Far Chang, two ideas, two ideas
Huawei's self -developed chip currently mainly includes 5G baseband chip Balong, AI chip Shengteng, and CPU chip Kunpeng.
Public information shows that in February 2018, Huawei released the world's first 8 -. 8 -. 4.5G LTE modulation chip Balong 765, which can enhance the security of intelligent vehicle networking. This chip will be applied to its own LTE -V2X vehicle terminal and RSU Product.
In the same year, Huawei released a computing platform that supports L4 -level autonomous driving capabilities -MDC600. It has 8 Huawei's latest AI chip promotion 310. At the same time, it also integrates the CPU and corresponding ISP modules. The main partners are Audi.
In January 2019, Huawei released 5G baseband chip Balong 5000. This is the world's first multi -mode chip to support V2X. It can be used in the field of networking and autonomous driving in the future. Compared with previous generations, this chip is smaller, lower energy consumption, and shorter delay.
However, the significance of the above products is more of the gradual release of technology accumulation. In solving the real commercial problem of the chip, Huawei's thinking can be summarized into two categories:
The first idea is to introduce the domestic supply chain. Based on this idea, Huawei has three more ways.
The first is self -built production capacity. Huawei is building its own chip production line. The reporter of "Finance" has been confirmed by a number of people familiar with the matter that Huawei has established the first wafer plant in Wuhan, which is mainly targeted at mature process chips in the early stage.
The second is cooperative research and development. In April 2020, Huawei Hisilicon announced the cooperation with BYD's Kirin 710A car machine chip in the field of automotive smart cockpit. This chip is similar to the Qualcomm 820A chip used by Xiaopeng P7 and the ideal ONE. It was originally used on the mobile phone and also used TSMC's 12nm process. However, due to the US sanctions, it was finally produced by SMIC. 14nm.
The third is foreign investment. "Eleven Finance" has previously reported in detail in the "Three -Year Investment of 40 Chip Companies, what to do in Huawei Hubble" in detail the investment logic of Huawei's Hubble Investment -closely survive. In Hubble's existing investment, all aspects of the semiconductor industry chain include IC design, EDA, packaging testing, equipment, and materials. However, it involves high -end chips and high -performance computing chips that coincide with Huawei Hisilicon. Hubble investment is not involved. This is a very obvious boundary.
The second idea is to survive the transition period in all possible ways before the domestic supply chain matures. Although the information released is extremely limited, the reporter of "Finance" learned that Huawei recovered some chips previously used on mobile phones and prepared for the car.
A Huawei Shanghai supplier told Caijing reporter that many people ignored Huawei's current official certification second mobile phone business, and this business was pushed to a new priority height this year.
The recycled mobile phone chip can be used for some parts that do not involve car safety on the car. A Huawei technical person told the reporter of "Finance", "If the large screen of central control can be replaced by recycled mobile phones or tablets."
03
Future possibility
For Huawei's car business, how fast the chip progresses, which determines the position of Huawei's future in the automotive field. It is likely to copy the glory of its leaders in the field of telecommunications equipment and mobile phones. Auto parts manufacturer?
In addition to the above resistance, an industry person analyzed the reporter of "Finance" that in addition to the hardware performance of the chip, Huawei also faced two key issues in this business. One is how to build an ecosystem around the chip, and the other is how to integrate into the car into the car Industry chip industry chain.
In national competition between chips in the autonomous driving field, the United States currently occupies an overwhelming advantage. Except for Tesla adopting a self -developed chip route, Mobileye and Nvidia almost divided the autonomous driving AI chip market: the former mainly monopolized the L2 autonomous driving market, and later The person is biased towards the autonomous driving chip market that controls the L4 and above levels.
New domestic car manufacturing forces currently need to rely on US procurement. Weilai ES8 is equipped with Mobileye chips. Xiaopeng G3 also uses Mobileye chips and replaced with Nvida Xavier on P7; ideal ONE also used Mobileye chips at first. The car X01 is planned to be equipped with Nvidia Orin chip.
Autonomous driving ability is the key bargaining chip of Huawei Automobile's business, and this ability depends on chip support. And this is actually the differentiated advantage of Huawei. For example, Huawei is doing the business of partial chip solutions -this is considered to be Huawei's advantage that is different from other suppliers.
In the field of intelligent automobiles, directly providing chip solutions for car companies, which means that Huawei can greatly shorten the development process of car companies. In Qualcomm, in the cooperation between Qualcomm and car companies, Qualcomm's role is a secondary supplier. Its chip needs to adapt to the first -level supplier Desesiwei. Companies adapt. This will help car companies to gain core competitiveness in the competition of the smart car window period in the competition of the smart car window period.
Huawei Xu Zhijun previously stated that Huawei's plan was about two years. When the inventory was consumed, it was not subject to any restrictions.
Fortunately, the car is a large product, and the shipment and the mobile phone are not at all at all, which also reduces the demand for the number of chips that can truly be stuck in the stuck neck.
From another perspective, various information shows that because Huawei cannot purchase American chips, it has a large income for American companies. The possibility of the United States on Huawei on mature -making chips is extremely low, that is, there is still enough space between the "worst possibilities" and established facts to allow Huawei to obtain controllable chip supply chains.
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