SHENZHEN, China — The continuous expansion of electronics inside cars — both internal combustion and EV — has made automotive the semiconductor market’s lead driver in recent years.

ST CEO Jean-Marc Chery

In a recent one-on-one interview with EE Times, STMicroelectronics CEO Jean-Marc Chery described competition on the global automotive market as “very intense.” Citing a broader automotive segment covering both “legacy and smart driving,” he said, “We see Infineon, Renesas, and NXP in front us, and there is also Rohm.”

Unlike NXP Semiconductors, which can simply call itself “the world’s largest automotive chip supplier,” it’s tough for ST to describe an automotive business that consists of multiple layers. For example, while supplying products to Tier Ones and OEMs, ST also provides fabless chip vendors with ST’s ASIC design, sometimes customer-owned tooling (COT), and foundry services.

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Key automotive questions for ST include:

• How does ST plan to compete with its rivals — not just in today’s market but also in the future automotive industry?

• What’s ST’s strategy in China now that it is the world’s largest automotive market?

• What kind of ADAS platform does ST have to address a market of increasingly automated vehicles?

An area where ST has pulled ahead of the competition is its lead in silicon-carbide (SiC) technology. System Plus Consulting, which is Yole Développement’s partner, for instance, found that Tesla’s Model 3 inverter is using a SiC power module. The market research company suspects that this is a fruit of ST’s close collaboration with Tesla.

In contrast, ST appears to be lagging in development of its own ADAS platform. Chery asserted that ST is working with a yet-to-be-named partner on an ADAS platform to address “the medium- to low-end automotive market in China and Asia.” However, he eschewed specifics. When asked if the platform has a name, Chery said that there is none — at least, not yet.

Tight with partners
ST has relied heavily on a strong partner, Mobileye, to elevate itself as a player in the ADAS market.

Explaining ST’s role as Mobileye’s ASIC partner, Chery noted, “Mobileye designs complex [vision, safety] software, but Mobileye needs a strong semiconductor company like ST.”

ST, for example, interfaces with foundries, sources the wafers, assembles the dies into a package, tests the ASIC, and then ships to Mobileye.

Matching EyeQ SoC’s “mission profile with technology features” of a process design is no cakewalk, explained Chery. “You need a strong know-how in the physical implementation of a design and verification.”

Evolution of Mobileye’s EyeQ SoCs (Source: Mobileye)

Up to 28nm (Mobileye’s EyeQ4 is based on FD-SOI), it was easy for ST, said Chery, because ST has been manufacturing Mobileye’s chips at its own fab in Crolles, France. But as Mobileye’s new EyeQ5 moves to TSMC’s 7nm process node, the transfer “has required intense collaboration with the foundry.”

Mobileye is already an undisputed leader in the global ADAS market. The company claims as much as an 80% share. By extension, said Chery, “ST is behind that 80%.”

He added, “Thanks to Mobileye, we are proposing a host of products that play complementary roles in ADAS vehicles. They include a small lidar (a derivative of ST’s time-of-flight sensors), radars (24 GHz and 77 GHz), microcontrollers with secure element, and V2V connectivity chips developed by Autotalks.