Looking at SIP technology from the perspective of intelligent cockpit chips.

Author: Zuocheng Gang

The cockpit is suitable for the implementation of SIP technology due to its low safety level and the need for rapid iteration.

Intelligent cockpit has become a new value growth point of vehicles. Consumers pay more attention to the intelligence and technology of vehicles when buying them, and its core is SOC. In addition, the trend of “consumer electronics” is also reflected in intelligent cockpits, as the 8155 is the car version of the phone chip 855.

Because of the requirements of vehicle reliability and chip vehicle certification, the development of vehicle electronic technology has always lagged behind that of consumer electronics, usually at least 3-5 years. The intelligent cockpit platform SOC SA8155P series launched by Qualcomm in 2019 has a basic design derived from the Snapdragon 855 released in 2018, which is a difference of one year in terms of time. However, when it comes to technology application, the time difference will be two to three years.

However, if SIP technology is adopted, the application of technology from consumer electronics products in intelligent cockpits will be accelerated, and the difficulty and cost of use will also be reduced.

Next, let’s talk about SIP technology.

Definition and Advantages of SIP

SIP, or System in Package, is similar to the SOC (System on chip) we often talk about, which is a system-level chip that integrates a series of other integrated circuits on a chip to achieve a system-level function, such as the SOC chip of a mobile phone.

Taking the popular Qualcomm cockpit chip SA8155 as an example, this SOC integrates the following circuits:

• CPU+GPU

• DSP+NPU

• Audio + video – Camera processing and interface

• Other interfaces such as USB, PCIe, etc., and some general I/O

• LTE modem, Wi-Fi + Bluetooth optional

And it has passed the AEC-Q100 Grade-3 certification, which can be used in automotive applications.

But as you can see, compared to the SOC chip used in mobile phones, SA8155 seems to be missing something? LTE, WiFi, and BLE Bluetooth have become optional and are no longer standard (they are all standard in mobile phone applications). What about GPS and NFC? They are not included and need to be external, but the SOC has an interface to support them.

(3) 高度可靠性，基于 PCBA 技术，相比于多块独立器件，更少的焊点会使得整个模组更为稳定可靠；

(4) 易于生产和测试，SIP 作为一个整体模组，它的测试和生产比 SOC 更方便可控。

以上是 SIP 相对于 SOC 的几个优势。

(3) High flexibility, can be customized according to customer or product needs;

(4) Reduce production and manufacturing costs, such as reducing PCB layers by 50%, reducing area by more than 50%, and reducing PCB surface mount points and process requirements for cost savings;

(5) Higher reliability and lower failure rate- a SIP package reduces hundreds of welding points and potential failure points, and also makes the SOC immune to environmental conditions;

(6) Greatly reduce the difficulty of testing and debugging, and can be used without professional equipment;

(7) Greatly reduce the complexity of use and development difficulties, and even SIP suppliers can provide system software package services, thereby shortening the development cycle and reducing development costs;

(8) Help Tier 1 transfer design efforts to system functions, thereby creating greater value for customers;

(9) Reduce supply chain costs. SIP packaging reduces a large number of components, simplifying the supply chain. This can reduce costs in three ways: first, reducing supplier management costs, second, reducing inventory costs for components, and third, reducing procurement costs (this is easy to understand, similar to the concept of parts-to-whole ratio in vehicles).

So, which products are suitable for being made into SIP format? The author believes:

Technical perspective: making it into a SIP makes it more reliable, smaller, and better in performance, such as IGBT modules and Sic modules used in electric vehicles;

Cost perspective: making it into a SIP is cheaper;

Application perspective: making it into a SIP simplifies the application, or based on application requirements, requires making it into a SIP, such as LED modules or multi-channel laser devices.

Most of the SIP packages are based on specific chipsets, which can greatly reduce user difficulty, shorten development cycles, and reduce design costs. This is especially suitable for small companies with low technical strength, small production volumes, and commercial vehicle applications with variable applications but small volumes, as well as early stages of passenger car new models.

Especially for RF or communication applications, SIP seems to be a better choice. For example, for T-Box car networking applications, after adopting SIP, customers no longer need to use special testing equipment for debugging (first of all, the equipment is expensive, and the debugging requires high professionalism and is difficult), and the SIP supplier will help you with it.

Regulatory level of SIP

Now let’s talk about the regulatory level of SIP. Before the release of the AEC-Q104 specification, it was a long-standing issue for manufacturers of complex multicore modules such as MCM and SIP to adopt which standard for regulatory level testing. Therefore, the release of the AEC-Q104 specification has attracted widespread attention in the industry.

AEC-Q104, jointly developed by AEC with companies such as Intel, Infineon, Microchip, NXP, Onsemi, and TI, is the industry’s first standard applicable to MCM and SIP, defining BLR (Board Level Reliability) testing. What problem does it solve?

With the development of vehicle electrification, intelligentization, and assisted driving technology, the original AEC standard was used at the component level, the ISO/IEC standard was used at the part level, but there was no applicable standard for MCM and SIP. And AEC-Q104 just answered this question.

In the article “A 50,000-word long-read explains what ‘regulatory level’ really means“, we explained AEC-Q104 in detail, and we will not repeat the standard part here. We will mainly look at what help AEC-Q104 can provide to you if you are doing or using SIP.

For SIP manufacturers, AEC has detailed recommendations and regulations for subcomponents, which can be summarized as follows:

(1) All MCM should use AEC certified components;

(2) Then only Group H testing is required;

(3) Otherwise, you have to go through all the test items.

Translate into English Markdown text with professional style, retaining HTML tags inside Markdown, and only outputting corrections and improvements without explanations.

For SIP users, it is necessary to distinguish whether the so-called “automotive grade” SIPs or some modules have passed AEC-Q testing. If only the core chip has AEC-Q, or claims that the temperature range meets the minimum 85-degree requirement for automotive applications, the manufacturing plant has an IATF16949 or PPAP, and then dare to say that it is “automotive grade,” everyone should be careful.

The above is a typical negative example, and below we take a positive example. News in early 2022 said that a domestic technology company had customized an intelligent cabin module for industry customers, which has passed the AEC-Q104 automotive grade certification and has been installed and mass-produced. I think this is a good start for automotive cabin SIP.

Will the future of smart cabin chips be SIP?

The numerous advantages of SIP packaging technology make it not only widely used in the industrial field, but also in the consumer field, including smartphones, watches, and so on.

For example, in the hot intelligent hardware industry, manufacturers are mainly faced with the challenge of how to put many functional requirements into extremely small spaces, which makes the overall hardware design and integration extremely difficult. After integration, they still need to consider system-level compatibility, while SIP packaging integrates a large number of components, greatly improving integration and greatly simplifying system design.

Apple has been using SIP technology on its phones since generation 1 to generation 6. All WiFi is using Murata’s SIP. After the Apple Watch and iPhone 7, SIP packaging technology has been fully adopted. The promotion of industry giants will make the popularization and development of SIP technology more smooth. At the same time, we must also see that SIP is becoming a new driving force for industry development in the post-Moore’s Law era.

Now, back to the title, will SIP be the development direction for cabin chips, or automotive applications?We have mentioned before that, for reasons of reliability, in-car electronics lag behind consumer electronics. However, with the development of autonomous driving and vehicle intelligentization technology, smart cockpit technology is expected to break the curse of being always lagging behind consumer technology for nearly half a century. For example, the Model 3 directly cancels the instrument panel, and some new energy vehicles also directly minimize the instrument panel while the central control screen becomes increasingly larger. The instrument panel changes from small to large, then to small again, and finally disappears; the central control screen goes from non-existent to becoming the center of the entire cockpit.

From this development trend, we can see that smart cockpits can gradually move away from some safety attributes of cars and move closer to the consumer field. This provides the possibility for SIP technology to be applied to smart cockpits in the future because only SIP technology can accelerate the rapid iteration of consumer technology in the cockpit, while reducing usage difficulty and cost.

We can compare it to mobile applications. The focus of updates every year is on SOC, memory, camera, and appearance. Correspondingly, for cockpit SIP, if the SIP supplier can solve the SIP car-level problem, upgrading the cockpit by replacing with a new SIP directly improves the technology iteration cycle of the cockpit for Tier 1 and OEM, which makes it closer to the consumer level.

So, who is suitable to do the SIP for smart cockpits after all? Tier 2 or Tier 1 or someone else? Let’s explore this.

The automotive industry has two characteristics. First, it is relatively closed to the outside world. For example, the structure of automotive chip suppliers is very stable, and the technological iteration is far slower than that of the consumer level. It is common to sell a chip for over a decade or two. It is very difficult for consumer level suppliers to enter the automotive industry.

Second, the technological solutions are diverse. The automotive industry has a point that insiders in the industry are accustomed to, but from an external perspective, it may seem strange: why do each OEM have different requirements, each Tier 1 is in the business of customizing designed products, and each product is not universal? (Of course, it is not absolute. For example, Bosch’s ESC+iBooster is a product that is basically universal and aims to dominate the world; it still depends on the game results between Tier 1 and OEM, and whose strength is stronger).The author understands that when Huawei first entered the automotive industry, they intended to develop standardized solutions that could be widely used across the industry. However, they soon found out that the automotive industry does not work this way – each OEM requires customization, from hardware to software, based on their own requirements. Those of us in the industry are used to this, but newcomers may find themselves confused.

The recent “soul debate” immediately drew criticism from many sides, but what the public does not know is that the entire automotive industry is “closed”, not just one particular OEM. This is simply a characteristic of industries with high security requirements.

Generally speaking, closure and diversity are contradictory. However, in the automotive industry, these two contradictions coexist harmoniously. Closed processes can make it difficult for new technologies to enter and make iterative progress slow. On the other hand, diversity of technology can lead to low universality, small product volume, and high costs, all of which can obstruct the application of SIP technology in vehicles.

From the perspective of Tier 1, companies that manufacture electronic components for vehicles are relatively large and have the ability to provide full-range software and hardware solutions. There are several considerations here:

1. As mentioned earlier, the “flexibility” of SIP is only relative, that is, it is much more flexible than custom SOC, but less flexible than Tier 1 splicing their own chips – once SIP is adopted, Tier 1 cannot make any design changes without consulting the SIP supplier. In this era of rapid technological iteration, Tier 1 does not want to have to constantly consult with SIP suppliers for every design change.

2. Is the cost controllable? The advantage of SIP, mentioned earlier, is the reduction in supply chain costs – this is the positive and negative side of the coin. If costs cannot be reduced, they may even become higher.

3. Finally, supply chain security may also be a reason. For example, the widespread shortage of chips in the automotive industry may make SIP solutions very dangerous, while traditional design solutions are easier to modify or replace chips.

Therefore, Tier 1 rarely uses SIP directly, and generally relies on SOC chip solutions. Large Tier 1 companies have strong technical capabilities and products with larger scale, so they can receive strong technical support from chip manufacturers. After using modules however, Tier 1 and Tier 2 chip suppliers are sandwiched together, perhaps making the larger manufacturers think twice.

Another reason why Tier 1 dislikes using SIP directly can be traced back to the origin of SIP – PCBA module technology. This technology is still widely used in the automotive industry and is a precursor and alternative to SIP.## PCBA Module Technology

PCBA (Printed Circuit Board Assembly) module technology is to create a small circuit board module for a specific functional circuit. The interface can be a pin connector or a surface mount pad around the edge of the board. Here is a typical PCBA RF module, which can integrate an IC, an external crystal oscillator, passive components such as resistors, capacitors, beads, and an on-board antenna.

As we mentioned earlier when talking about SIP, one of the biggest advantages of using PCBA modules rather than ICs is for radio frequency or communication applications. The module can be used directly without designing a PCB antenna (which means a lot for those who have done it before) and calibration and debugging with specialized testing equipment is not needed. This saves time, effort, and costs. Therefore, in automotive applications, the use of PCBA modules has developed very quickly, but this is limited to Tier 1, not industry-wide.

PCBA module technology has a relatively low level of difficulty, so Tier 1 can do it themselves. It is very suitable for modular applications as the PCBA module can be used on a platform, reducing testing costs, shortening development cycles, and avoiding reinventing the wheel.

Since the lifecycle of automotive components is long and the core functionality of each product is basically unchanged, for Tier 1 companies, developing their own PCBA modules is a low-cost, modular and universal design. This can significantly benefit the company by reducing costs and allowing for a standardized platform.

Some may wonder why there are no suppliers making universal PCBA modules if they are so good. This is due to the closed and diverse nature of the automotive industry, as well as cost and supply chain issues.

For example, a PCBA module may be a complete solution for a chip supplier using their own chips. However, for Tier 1, the solution may not be optimal, with too many or too few functions, or performance issues. The cost may not be the most optimal either. Using a complete solution may also pose supply chain security issues. However, using a complete solution has advantages such as good technical support and chip compatibility, which are easy to understand, similar to how an Apple watch needs to be paired with an iPhone for optimal use.Let’s return to the diversity of solutions in the automotive industry, especially for complex multi-chip integrated PCBA modules, such as the core board used for video processing or cabin applications. This kind of PCBA requires multiple chip suppliers and is not easy for a single supplier or Tier 1 to handle. This is where a specialized Tier 1.5 is more suitable.

Overall, SIP applications in the automotive industry are still limited, but considering the numerous advantages of SIP packaging and the development direction of future intelligent cabins, SIP technology still has a promising future. However, due to the unique nature of the automotive industry, the future of SIP automotive applications is challenging.

This article is a translation by ChatGPT of a Chinese report from 42HOW. If you have any questions about it, please email bd@42how.com.