Global and China Automotive RISC-V Chip Industry Research Report 2024: Customized Chips May Become the Future Trend, and RISC-V will Challenge ARM

DUBLIN, March 14, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Automotive RISC-V Chip Industry Research Report, 2024" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

Automotive RISC-V Research: Customized chips may become the future trend, and RISC-V will challenge ARM

What is RISC-V?

Reduced Instruction Set Computing - Five (RISC-V) is an open standard instruction set architecture (ISA) based on established reduced instruction set computer (RISC) principles. RISC-V can be used to design and implement processor chips and computer architectures. It competes with X86 and ARM globally.

RISC-V's advantage mainly lies in that its instruction sets and architectures are open source and free. Its modular design allows enterprises to add, expand or remove the instruction sets. In contrast, ARM and X86 are not only complicated in instruction set development, but also difficult to obtain authorization to modify instruction sets.

However, RISC-V's disadvantage mainly rests in the relatively immature ecosystem. Related compilers, development tools, software integrated development environment (IDE) and other ecological elements are still developing.

RISC-V makes chip customization easier

RISC-V adopts modular ISA, that is, it consists of a basic integer instruction set (the basic integer instruction set is the only mandatory basic instruction set for RISC-V, and other instruction sets are optional extension modules) and multiple optional extension instruction sets. Therefore, a CPU can be customized according to the requirements of a specific application.

In terms of customization, it enables designers to create thousands of potential customized processors, thus speeding up the time to market. The universality of processor IP also shortens software development time.

For example, Codasip can provide users with processor customized IP solutions based on RISC-V. The solution includes basic processor IP and development tool Codasip Studio. The engineering team can realize the integrated design of hardware and software according to project requirements and improve the efficiency of customized processor design. In October 2023, Codasip introduced the highly flexible 700 family for unlimited innovation. With the 700 family and Codasip Custom Compute, designers can push the technology limits by optimizing at the chip or application level for unique gains while keeping costs under control.

SiFive is a semiconductor enterprise based on RISC-V customization. SiFive mainly assists companies to customize processor cores based on RISC-V. Through its customized RISC-V semiconductor, it facilitates IC design and system companies to shorten the time to market and reduce costs.

The combination of RISC-V and chiplet technology reduces the cost and threshold of chip design

In order to reduce the cost and threshold of chip design, RISC-V processor development companies and research institutions combine RISC-V with chiplet technology.

Chiplets package specific functional dies into multiple homogeneous and heterogeneous module chips through intra-chip interconnection technology (die-to-die). Chiplet technology can divide a SoC into independent modules and manufacture them separately, thus improving the yield and reducing the design cost.

In November 2023, Ventana Micro Systems Inc. announced Veyron V2, the second generation of its Veyron family of RISC-V processors. The Veyron V2 is the highest performance RISC-V processor available today and is offered in the form of chiplets and IP. The Veyron V2 chiplet features industry leading UCIe chiplet interconnect. Veyron V2's chiplet-based solutions provide advantages in unit economics, accelerating time to market by up to two years and reducing development costs by up to 75%. Chiplet-based solutions also provide better unit economics by right sizing compute, IO, and memory.

Nuclei System Technology, as a RISC-V CPU IP enterprise, is laying out chiplets. In November 2022, Nuclei System Technology joined the UCIe (Universal Chiplet Interconnect Express) Industry Alliance as China's first RISC-V CPU IP enterprise that did so. Nuclei System Technology will work together with other members of UCIe Industry Alliance around the world to research and apply the specifications of UCIe 1.0 and the next-generation UCIe technical standard, and will carry out hard-core IP R&D based on chiplet interconnection.

On January 9, 2024, the Institute of Computing Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (ICT) launched a 'big chip' called 'Zhejiang'. With chiplet design, it includes 16 chiplets with a total of 256 RISC-V cores (each chiplet has 16 RISC-V cores), all of which are programmable and reconfigurable.

The domestic market is potential, and the automotive electronics market is expected to become the next hotspot of RISC-V

MCUs account for approximately 30% of the semiconductor devices used in a car. A traditional car has about 50-100 MCUs, while the number in a smart car will double.

However, the market share of automotive-grade MCUs made in China is less than 5%, which means enormous potential of such MCUs.

In the past, automotive chips were mainly based on ARM or private architectures of some European chip companies. RISC-V offers more options for the research and development of domestic automotive chips. Its open design enables automotive chip vendors to make specific layout according to their own needs, thus enriching product forms.

At present, automotive software and tool chains are still fragmented. If an ARM is suitable for all situations, it is difficult to find universality between upper software vendors and operating system and application vendors. Compared with ARM, RISC-V features stronger customization, and its rich extensibility can meet the growing demand of automotive electronic systems in the future. The architecture is free to use, which can reduce the research and development cost and is not restricted by any patent or copyright. Therefore, automotive electronics is expected to become the next hotspot of RISC-V.

Top five automotive chip companies Qualcomm, Bosch, Infineon, NXP, Nordic established Quintauris GmbH in December 2023, focusing on RISC-V. Headquartered in Munich, Germany, the company's CEO is Alexander Kocher (previously served as CEO and president of Elektrobit, an automotive embedded solution provider, and also worked in companies such as Continental, Siemens and Infineon). Initially, the company will pivot on automotive applications, and then gradually expand to mobile devices, Internet of Things chips and other fields.

However, there are two major challenges in making RISC-V get on vehicles. First, it takes a long time to obtain automotive-grade certification. IATF 16949 should be met, chips should comply with ACQ-100, modules should follow ACQ-104 and ISO26262. Second, it is necessary to establish a sound software ecosystem, including a wider range of operating systems and middleware, and more optimization and verification for specific automotive applications.

Key Topics Covered:

1 How does RISC-V break through?
1.1 Definition and Development History of RISC-V
1.2 Development Milestones of RISC-V
1.3 Classification of Instruction Sets
1.4 Comparison among RISC-V, ARM and X86
1.5 Main Application Scenarios of RISC-V
1.6 Challenges for RISC-V Getting on Vehicles (1)
1.7 How to Promote the Industrialization of RISC-V?
1.8 How to lower the Threshold of Open Source Chip Development?

2 RISC-V Automotive-grade Products and Market Trends
2.1 Trends of RISC-V Market Shipments
2.2 Expectations of the Global Industry for Key Nodes of High-performance RISC-V Chips
2.3 Trend Discussion: Will RISC-V Replace X86 and ARM?
2.5 Trend Discussion: The Emerging RISC-V Will Be a Breakthrough for Domestic Automotive Chip Vendors?

3 Automotive RISC-V CPU IP and Chip Vendors
3.1 Nuclei System Technology
3.2 Andes Technology
3.3 ESWIN
3.4 SiFive
3.5 Codasip
3.6 RAMBUS
3.7 Renesas
3.8 Tenstorrent
3.9 Kneron
3.10 ChipEXT
3.11 WingSemi Technology
3.12 Mobileye
3.13 BinarySemi
3.14 TIH Microelectronics
3.15 Telink
3.16 HPMicro
3.17 LinkedSemi
3.18 NSITEXE

4 RISC-V Eco-software Vendors (Automotive Field)
4.1 IAR
4.2 Arraymo
4.3 Green Hills Software
4.4 Vector and Andes Jointly Promote RISC-V AUTOSAR Software Innovation in the Automotive Industry

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/qfjeva

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