CARIAD, a software company under the Volkswagen Group, and STMicroelectronics announced that the two parties will soon start to cooperate in the development of automotive system-on-chip (SoC), creating a new model of software-defined automotive cooperation. CARIAD is working with STMicroelectronics to create customized hardware for device interconnection, energy management and wireless updates, so that the car can fully realize software-defined functions, information is more secure, and it is more future-proof.
The goal of the partnership is to provide processor chips for a new generation of vehicles based on the Volkswagen Group's unified scalable software platform. At the same time, the two parties reached an agreement that TSMC, a global semiconductor foundry, would manufacture SoC wafers for STMicroelectronics. With this move, CARIAD aims to allow the Volkswagen Group to lock in the supply of automotive chips years in advance.
According to reports, CARIAD will for the first time establish direct cooperative relations with Volkswagen Group's secondary and tertiary semiconductor suppliers. In the future, CARIAD plans to lead the group's tier-one suppliers to specify SoCs co-developed with STMicroelectronics, as well as STMicroelectronics' Stellar microcontrollers, for use in the CARIAD area architecture.
Murat Aksel, Member of the Management Board of Volkswagen Group and Head of Purchasing, said, "We will create a new cooperation model for Volkswagen Group. Through the ST and TSMC partnership, we are actively shaping the company's entire semiconductor supply chain. .Ensuring that suppliers produce the chips we need, as well as a stable supply of critical chips for years to come. In this way, we are setting a new standard in strategic supply chain management.”
This is the first collaborative development between CARIAD and STMicroelectronics. CARIAD CEO Dirk Hilgenberg said that we will cooperate with ST to develop chips, and at the same time unswervingly implement our semiconductor strategy. The co-developed SoC works perfectly with our software without any compromises. In this way, we can offer our group customers the best possible vehicle performance.
Dirk Hilgenberg pointed out that the unified use of an optimized architecture in all electronic control units of Volkswagen can bring a huge impetus to the efficient development of software platforms. This development efficiency will in the future enable all Electronic Control Unit (ECU) chips, from microcontrollers to SoCs, to execute within a common base software.
