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[Media View] Cmsemicon: Domestic MCU Manufacturer is Keep Upgrading
2021-12-06
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Since Intel developed the Intel 4004 microcontroller in 1971, microcontrollers (MCU) with integrated analog, storage and peripheral interfaces have been applied into all aspects of electronic products and systems. Also, since Arm started to launch microprocessor cores with RISC architecture in licensing mode in 1991, the MCUs with Arm cores have occupied 52% of the global market.

 

MCU Market Applications and Competition


Today's MCU has evolved into complete system-on-chips (SoCs). Microprocessor cores range from 4M to 200MHz; on-chip analog modules include ADC, op-amp and DAC; built-in memory include Flash and MRAM; peripheral interfaces include UART, I2C, SPI and USB, etc.; and wafer technology gradually evolve from 90nm to 55nm, 40nm and even 28nm.


MCU has six main application markets, of which the automotive occupies about 33%, industrial applications occupy 25%, and the remaining 42% are distributed in computers and networks, consumer electronics, home appliances, IoT, intelligent security and other applications. The global microcontroller MCU market is expected to reach total sales of $19 billion in 2021, with shipments of more than 25 billion chips. The top five MCU vendors (Renesas, NXP, Infineon, ST, Microchip) account for more than 75%, while none of the domestic MCU vendors in China reaches a market share of 1%. The following table briefly lists the gap between domestic MCU companies and the foreign giants.

 

From the above comparison, it can be seen that domestic MCU vendors are not as good as international vendors in terms of design process and supply chain management system, however, they are oriented towards application market and customer service support. This is also the reason why most of the domestic MCU vendors are used in home appliances and consumer electronics, while the automotive market and industrial control, where quality and supply chain control requirements are more stringent, account only for a small percentage.

 

However, the domestic MCU manufacturers are seizing the opportunity of "domestic substitution" and "chip shortage" to progress into the automotive and industrial markets. In a recent live show of ASPENCORE, "Opportunities and Challenges of Domestic MCU", Andy, CTO of Cmsemicon Co., Ltd, was invited by the main analyst of Electronic Engineering Album, Gu Zhengshu, to share with the audience the thinking and attempts of Cmsemicon about its growth process.



Deputy General Manager and Technical Director

B.S. from Xi'an Jiaotong University, M.S. from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

Engaged in chip design and development for nearly 20 years

Obtain13 U.S. invention patents, has led the team to design a number of small signal amplifier chips since 2017’s entry.

 

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Platform-Like MCU Ecology Building

 

Andy believes that there is a gap between domestic MCU companies and foreign ones, but they are now having the ability to develop mainstream MCU in the market. From the demand side, China possesses the hugest demand in the world. Domestic MCU companies are closer to Chinese clients and familiar with the domestic product ecology, so they can schedule and develop product features and definitions that are more in line with Chinese market demand.


Second, the trend of chip shortage caused by the Covid-19 epidemic is pushing domestic MCU companies to accelerate their transformation and focus their limited productivity on more superior, more competitive products and application fields. The market has a strong demand for mixed-signal chips with reduced power consumption and cost and higher integration. Excellent domestic MCU vendors are improving their capability of defining forward-looking products, developing mature high-integrated mixed-signal chip and establishing platform-like MCU ecology.


Cmsemicon, as one of the earlier representatives of Chinese domestic MCU design companies, has long focused on research, development and innovation of digital-analog mixed-signal SoC and analog chips, with design capabilities of mainstream series of MCUs, high-precision analog, power drivers, power devices, wireless RF, high-performance touch and underlying core algorithms. Products are put into production on 55nm to 180nm CMOS process, 90nm to 350nm BCD, high voltage 700V driver, bipolar, SGTMOS, IGBT and other manufactural steps. The comprehensive technology capability enables the company a platform-like chip design company, serving areas from home appliances, consumer electronics, motor batteries, medical and health care to industrial control, automotive electronics and IoT.

 

Technology Upgrade Drives Automotive MCU


“Benefiting from the automotive turn more intelligent, electrified, network-based and sharing, the penetration of MCU in the field of automotive electronics is gradually deepening. Cmsemicon is continuously focusing on the research and breakthroughs of automotive-grade MCU, in order to improve the performance of such MCUs in terms of safety, performance, connectivity, computing power, cost and ecosystem.


The main applications of 32-bit MCUs include instrumentation displaying systems, multimedia infotainment systems, chassis control, engine control, and emerging intelligent and real-time safety systems and powertrains. 8-bit MCUs are mostly used for body control functions such as lighting, air conditioning, wipers, windows, seats and doors.


Cmsemicon's technology strategy is to establish complete mixed-signal SoC designs with sensing inputs and driving outputs. To strengthen its technical research and development abilities, the company has not only recruited high-level technical talents with rich experience from international semiconductor companies such as Renesas, Myman and Ge-Core, but also invested more in automotive labs and test equipment to enhance the company's software and hardware technology development capabilities.


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Cmsemicon has made a significant move from industrial-grade MCU to automotive-grade MCU. The automotive MCU product series that have been released and are planned to be developed are shown in the picture below. 


Cmsemicon is actively promoting the localization and independent control of automotive-grade chips, and its several automotive-grade MCU products for body control units has already been delivered, such as wipers, windows, power seats, air conditioners, and lighting, which marks Cmsemicon’s great advancement in the domestic substitution of automotive MCUs.

 

Advanced Manufacturing Process Leads Productivity Optimization

 

For domestic MCU companies, only by sparing no efforts in search and development, IP development, safety, reliability, yield, etc., could they make a breakthrough into these high-end and high-potential markets of automotive and industrial. Furthermore, it is essential that linking up the upstream and downstream resources on the industry chain, such as chip design, foundry and packaging, to stabilize productivity and jointly launch domestic MCU chips with good performance, safety and reliability.


Cmsemicon has cooperated for over 16 years with Hua Hong Semiconductor Limited, a global, leading pure-play foundry with specialty process. It has mass production in all nodes of eFlash and BCD processes of Hua Hong Semiconductor. As one of Hua Hong Semiconductor's long-term customers for MCU and Power Management, Cmsemicon is also the first customer of the new 12-inch 55nm eFlash process platform. Currently, its 90nm eFlash MCU, 90nm BCD motor driver, and 55nm eFlash MCU are in mass production at Hua Hong's 12-inch production line in Plant 7. The shift to advanced manufacturing process is a strategic adjustment for Cmsemicon to address the shortage of domestic MCU productivity.


Hua Hong's Power Discrete products in 12-inch have been verified as automotive-grade products, and all electrical parameters are maintained at excellent levels. Subsequently, Hua Hong and Cmsemicon will deepen their cooperation to jointly utilize domestic automotive-grade 110nm manufacturing process and below to continuously develop automotive instrumentation displaying control chips and other series of automotive-grade chips based on M0+ or M4 cores, in an effort to achieve the domestic substitution of automotive-grade MCUs.

 

 Multi-Line Layout to Build the Future

 

Industrial control is the second largest application market of MCU only behind automotive electronics. MCU is an important part of motor which serves as the most common component of industrial control applications, which means it must have high reliability, strong anti-interference performance, high precision, fast speed and high efficiency, and can perform the complex and high-speed operations required for motor control.

 

Cmsemicon has launched a complete product portfolio of 8-bit and 32-bit motor control considering the characteristic of the high torque density of brushless DC motors, and set out to create a full-featured development platform of MCU chips with high performance for large home appliance control and industrial control. The platform is based on the ARM Cortex-M4F series core, supporting DSP instructions, floating point operations, internal bus zero wait and other functions, integrating the company's power management module, peripheral communication interfaces, analog interfaces and various power driver modules. It is targeted at making the performance indexes of its products exceed those of similar foreign products, and simplifying the material bill of customers' products.

 

Conclusion

 

In the environment of "domestic substitution" and "chip shortage", domestic MCU manufacturers have started to get rid of the traditional price war thinking and turned to upgrade and transform with the support of capital market, starting to shift from the home appliances and consumer electronics centered market strategies to the automotive-grade and industrial-grade MCU centered ones. In order to compete with foreign manufacturers in these high-end markets, they need not only advanced equipment and supply chain control system, but also talents of research and development and management, as well as future-oriented technology and market strategies.

 

As a typical representative of domestic MCU manufacturers, Cmsemicon is in the process of such an upgrading and transformation. There is no doubt that its useful exploration and attempts are worth learning from.


Media Contact
Email:Pr@mcu.com.cn
Contacts:Ms.Han

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