How Samsung Foundry is Helping Automakers Revolutionize the Road Ahead

As autonomous vehicles grow more sophisticated, learn why automakers are increasingly turning to automotive solutions from #SamsungFoundry for ADAS/AD, IVI, and more.

Automotive is evolving. Once mostly mechanical, automobiles are increasingly best understood as advanced computer systems on wheels, in which every aspect of an automobile's functionality is controlled and defined by software, including driving performance, safety, power efficiency, in-vehicle infotainment and more.

As automobiles become increasingly sophisticated, there is incredible pressure on automakers to improve performance while reducing the complexity of most vehicles electronic systems, which right now can contain as much as three miles of old-fashioned wire cabling. With the average vehicle slated to contain as many as 300 million lines of code by the end of this decade, the industry is shifting away from a domain automotive architecture to a zonal architecture based upon an ethernet backbone. In a Zonal architecture, instead of the systems being separated by domains, all functions within a certain region of the vehicle are connected to a zonal gateway, which is connected to other zonal gateways, as well as high-performance, centralized processors. This means fewer cables are needed to power the individual functions.

By 2030, approximately 25 million vehicles are expected to adopt zonal architectures, ushering in the next generation of automotive systems. That's why car makers are increasingly turning to Samsung Foundry for solutions to help them navigate this transition and create the next generation of advanced vehicles based on the most innovative technologies for ADAS, AD, IVI, and more.  

Your Vehicle's Central Nervous System: PMIC & MCU

In today's software-defined vehicles, hundreds of different systems throughout a vehicle are controlled by automotive microcontroller units (MCUs). These chips work together in concert to control every aspect of your vehicle, from engine control right down to the windshield wipers. To empower our customers with the most innovative technologies, Samsung Foundry enables its MCU customers with 28nm embedded non-volatile memory (eNVM) technologies, which combines both embedded Flash and embedded Magnetic RAM (eMRAM) for enhanced stability and performance. 

With all these MCUs networked together, each with their own associated power requirements, auto OEMs also need increasingly sophisticated power management. That's why Samsung Foundry offers to its customers enhanced power solutions on 8-inch wafers for both power management integrated circuits (PMIC) and battery monitoring integrated circuits (BMIC).  

ADAS/AD & Infotainment 

With the growth of the autonomous vehicles market, robust solutions for advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and autonomous driving (AD) are increasingly vital. For our auto customers, Samsung Foundry provides a range of processors and sensors for ADAS/AD across 14nm, 8nm, and 5nm nodes, with 4nm and 2nm nodes coming soon. In addition, we are working now on expanding our auto grade support for select processes, like 8nm and 5nm, from AG2 to AG1.

In addition, many of these same node processes drive our in-vehicle infotainment (IVI) offerings. To bring the next-level driving experience to life, Samsung Foundry is mass producing IVI solutions using 14nm, 8nm, and 5nm process technologies. If your auto business has an in-vehicle experience in mind, you can trust Samsung Foundry to deliver processors advanced and efficient enough to bring it to life.

Total Design Solutions Enabling Next-Level Automotive Design

When automakers partner with Samsung Foundry, though, they aren't just getting piecemeal solutions. They are kicking off their next-generation automobiles on a strong technical foundation of a package of total design solutions for automotive that future proofs their plans with Samsung Foundry's automotive IP and design infrastructure.  

This package has many components, and even more advantages. By partnering with Samsung Foundry, our customers can design in confidence, drawing upon an expansive automotive-hardened, IP-ready portfolio that covers technologies ranging from Analog, Memory Interface, High-Speed Interface, and Security. For enhanced quality and reliability, we also offer AEC-Q100-aware sign-off, DFT & Zero DPPM, as well as advanced functional safety for design methodology to our customers.  

With our fully certified design platform, Samsung Foundry provides automotive solutions to our customers certified for quality, reliability, safety, and security. Just bring us your designs and let us help you make them a reality on our common goal of revolutionizing the road ahead.

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