Automotive Connectivity in China and India with Freescale silicon

Freescale picked Beijing and Bangalore for their recent Technology Forum events – two very different cities, but some common themes at both events. Noticeable at both events was a tremendous appetite for new technology – around 1500 designers attended each event, hungry for new innovations particularly in the areas of smart energy, connected devices, automotive, and home-automation. China’s semiconductor industry grew by approx. 14% in 2011 to reach a record $43.5 billion – this growth was more than ten times greater than that of the total worldwide figure. It is an even more dramatic picture in India, where semiconductor market growth of 20% per annum is expected over the next four years. Both events featured presentation sessions full to overflowing with knowledge-acquisitive engineers, and demonstration booths surrounded several people deep.
Another common theme between the events was the high interest in Automotive Electronics – Asian car owners are expecting the latest in Telematics, Infotainment, and SmartPhone integration. Growth in car sales in China is approximately 25% per annum in an under-penetrated market. China has approximately 52 automobiles per 1000 people, while the U.S. and Europe have approximately 457 automobiles per 1000 people.
So there is a lot of room for vehicle growth on already crowded roads, helping to fuel growth in the automotive semiconductor business. Working against this growth is disposable household income – in the USA an average new car can be purchased for significantly less than the average disposable annual income of $27,000. In India, the average disposable annual income is only around $1,000, and an average new car costs 8 times this amount. As a result there is on-going pressure to reduce design and manufacturing costs further in order to address this untapped market. Many of the latest Freescale platforms allow several functions to be consolidated, helping to lower costs – expect to see more combinations of Instrument Clusters, ECUs and Infotainment Systems on one platform in future. Will the “car on a chip” appear one day?
Another central theme was the “internet of things”. Indoor base stations, known as picocells and femtocells, are predicted to be one of the fastest growing markets – by 2016 there are projected to be more than 55 million cell-based deployments per annum. Picocells and femtocells are low-power, small wireless access base stations located inside private premises for example a home or business environment. To operate they need a DSL or cable connection to take traffic back to the operator. Picocells are well suited to cope with the voice and data requirements of business users while Femtocells have higher capacity, and are therefore ideal for consumer applications such as Mobile TV. Freescale introduced the 28-nm chip with the interesting name QorIP Qonverge, an SoC targeted for microcells and metrocells— these cells will enhance coverage in dense urban areas beyond the scope of Pico- and Femto-cells
The combination of lower labour costs, high education standards, and lower manufacturing costs in Asia will present a growing challenge to design houses in the western world, and will help to keep us all competitive, but it is clear there is still plenty of room for innovation.