On October 25, the millimeter Poe Rada chip supplier has opened the first product conference in Shanghai. Compared with most technicia companies in the industry, the release will be unachable, but the team of more than 30 people came. Say, it is an important node, because this 3-year company released his first official mass production millimeter wave radar chip.
The products released have two main products: 77GHz chip for car millimeters - Yosemite (2T4R), Yosemite (4T8R), and 60GHz chips for industrial-grade consumer market Yellowstone.
The millimeter wavelet chip is always the battlefield of the giant. Domestic or foreign, British Failing, NXP almost occupied most of the market. Downstream suppliers do not lack of chip sources, but low-cost chips still have a huge market gap, which is also the entry point of Gartland.
Functionally, the difference between the two chips and the market is not obvious, but because of a large number of standard CMOS crafts used in digital simulation electronic product chips, the cost drops to the original SiGe chipset one-half to three One of them.
According to the love board network, at present, important players in the international car millimeters mainly are Bosch, Mainland, Delphi, Haila, the general small hardware supplier, the problem of chip suppliers Low, first, it has lost the advantages of competition with the first echelon at cost. Reducing chip costs is also an important appeal.
* Gartland's Yosemite (4T8R) chip
77GHz millimeter wave radar chip, the main line of the next five years
Millimeter Prada chips for more cheap and high integration are three years ago, Chen Jiayu made a basic positioning of the company at the beginning of the business.
In 2014, Chen Ji, who graduated from Dr. Berkeley, California, ended the 3-year career experience of Silicon Valley, and returned to China. Before this, he has made detailed research on entrepreneurial direction and domestic market.
Because I have been engaged in millimeter chip research in many years, I continue to optimize this field, in his plan, next step naturally continue along your own direction, do millimeter Prada chips.
In China, ADAS and smart driving heat will climb year by year, especially for the former, regardless of the controversy of L3, L4, L5 in the industry, but almost no one has doubtful to ADAS's application, standard ADAS function is in the past two years. Universal trend.
Because the cost is much lower than the laser radar, the detection accuracy is high, the size is small, and the millimeter wavelet has always been one of the ADAS irreplaceable configuration. On the establishment of ACC, AEB, blind spot monitoring, millimeter wave radar is important hardware support. Compared to the L4, L5, ADAs, which is still in the future, is an application that can be put into mass production immediately. This is also the most important point of Chen Ji and many ADAS entrepreneurs: fast commercialization expectations. At the moment, millimeter wave radar is equipped with high-end cars, med-end cars, and low-end markets are just open.
"In the past few decades, the total proportion of electronic component chips on the car has almost no change until the smart industry appears. The proportion of chips on the future will be more and more, this is a very big opportunity. Do 77GHz millimeter Poe Rada core The chip is the main line of our future five years. "Chen Jiayi explained. Only in the current point of view, the chip has accounted for 70% of the total cost of millimeters.
"From the development trend, now many host plants want a car to assemble 5 millimeter waverada, one medium and long distances, and see a short distance from the four corners of the vehicle, so that this is basically achievable 360 degrees coverage, forming a collision system and a variant assist system. "In 2020, the global car millimeter wave radar is expected to reach 72 million. If the penetration of 30% ADAS is estimated, three years later, domestic shipments can reach 45 million, and the market has more than 20 billion.
At the same time, in terms of 60 GHz millimeter waverada, in the nearly two years of hot drones, robots are also providing a full application scenario.
* Getlan's Yosemite (2T4R) chip
Craft node of chip
How to achieve high intensity, Getlan's solution is to use a large number of CMOS processes used in digital analog electronic chip markets, replacing the silicon-based silicon process used in millimeter-wave radar chips, and will radio, The simulation and mixed signal modules are all concentrated on one chip. After the single-chip replaces the multi-chip, the system version is more simplified because there is no need for unnecessary connections, and the integration is also higher.
"CMOS process nodes are evolving, every two will be updated every two years, this is Moore's law. 10 years ago, we stayed at 90 nm, 130 nm, and today is 10 nm .cmos process Feature size The smaller, so the operating frequency is getting higher and higher. When the process node is still in 90 nm, there is no possibility of working at 77GHz, and a more expensive chemical element "锗" in the silicon process can make The speed of the device is increased by more than 3 times, so that the millimeter wavelene chip is used in the past for a long time. "
"After 2010, the CMOS process entered the 45 nanometer node. The transistor FT approached 200GHz. The process itself had possible 77GHz circuit." Chen Jiawei believes that this process of CMOS has evolved to Getlan admission, and Complete the team development of CMOS millimeter wave integrated circuit in advance, which also won more active for the company later competition.
Until now, entrepreneurial companies developed by millimeter Podda chips are still very rare. On the one hand, the giants will take advantage of the market, and emerging companies is not easy to break into; on the other hand, talents engaged in millimeter chip research at home and abroad are very difficult, and the team is difficult to build. The team of Gartland is jointly built by Chen Ji and several partners from Silicon Valley. It has gradually expanded from today's scale.
After research and development
It is necessary to mass production of 77 GHz and 60 GHz high-frequency chip, which has also put forward very much test of circuit design. So how do you prove that Gatlan uses a chip using a CMOS process to achieve the same performance of germanium silicon?
"You can test directly." In the face of the question of the panel network, Chen Ji's answer is very simply.
More than a year ago, Gartlan began to introduce nearly 10 downstream partners, with samples and latter to carry system prototypes, and constantly debugging. In 2018, some millimeter-wave radar hardware in cooperation will be put into mass production. However, asked, Chen Jiayun said that it is not convenient to disclose.
During the research and development of the car chip, the level ratio is, for example, how to make the chip comply with zero 40 degrees to 125 degrees, CHEN Jimi admires that in this regard, the team spent more than a year. Test iteration .
In addition, the amount of funds required for chip manufacturing is huge, and the disposable investment of its mass production may be up to millions of dollars, and the return cycle is much longer than the general industry.
Technological companies have to have good financing capabilities, which is almost the industry consensus. At the end of 2014, this start-up chip has received an angel investment in Warden International and Silicone. In the first half of this year, A round investment from Zhongguancun Xingye and Feng Rui capital is "continued to have a blood."
For Entrepreneurs such as Gartlan, the mass production of the first generation chip is just initially completed from zero to one. How to make the product higher reliability, and enter more mainstream Tier 1 vendors, is the team needs to continue The direction of efforts. Technical iteration is a game with no customs clearance. At this point, most technologies understand that Chen Ji also understands. Https://www.eeboard.com/news/haomi/ https://www.eeboard.com/news/intel-93/
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