Eyeing the explosive demand for automotive-use chips fueled by rapid development of electric vehicles, driverless cars and drones, Globalfoundries has created a brand-new automotive electronics technology platform, with its 12-inch wafer Fab1 in Dresden, Germany dedicated as a manufacturing base for automotive chipsets.

The firm's AutoPro technology platform is designed to provide automotive electronics customers with total solutions to simplify their product accreditation process and facilitate the launch of new smart cars, aiming to grab a larger slice of the global automotive semiconductor market, estimated to reach an annual level of US$54 billion by 2023.

The platform covers FD-SOI (fully depleted silicon on insulator), SiGe (silicon germanium), CMOS and FinFET processes, and can also offer ASIC design, packaging and silicon IP services, providing customers with full series of technologies and services to satisfy their needs for smart-car connections and applications.

Meanwhile, Globalfoundries's 12-inch Fab 1 in Dresden enjoy a geographic advantage in supplying automotive semiconductor to leading automakers in Germany, including Volkswagen, Audi, BMW, and Mercedes, as well as major auto parts and components suppliers including Continental and Bosch.

Industry sources said that Globalfoundries has maintained cooperative partnerships with major MCU suppliers to four of the world's top-five automakers. Its other product lines designed for the automotive electronics sector include radar chips, embedded memory, Wi-Fi wireless transmission chips, sensor chip, and embedded memory.

The global auto industry has been undergoing virtually subversive evolutions these years, progressing from electric cars, connected vehicles and ADAS (advanced driver assistance system) to the final stage of autonomous cars, all showing tremendous demand for semiconductor chipsets at every stage.

Statistics compiled by IC Insights show that the automotive electronics sector commanded 10% of total global terminal market IC consumptions in 2016, next only to 25-30% for smartphones and 15-20% for standard-type PCs. Servers, digital TVs, IoT, and games consoles each followed with 5% or so, and the biomedical sector is rising as a new application field for chipsets.

Industry watchers said the IDM (integrated device manufacturer) operating model is staging a comeback, fanned by the advent of the automotive electronics era. They opined that the large variety and huge volume of ICs needed to support production of smart cars can allow a specified automaker to contract a 12-inch fab as an IDM to handle the design and fabrication of all the chipsets needed.

By: DocMemory
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