As global competition heats up in the AI sector, an emerging power has now joining the battlefield. Ola, an automotive manufacturer in India, plans to launch the country’s first in-house AI chip by 2026, which is based on ARM architecture, according to a report by Wccftech.

Though there are more details yet to be revealed, the report notes that Ola did highlight its key chip offerings, featuring the Bodhi series, which would be the nation’s first self-developed AI chips. The company’s product lineup also reportedly includes the Sarv-1 cloud-native CPUs and the Ojas edge AI chip.

When asked about the potential foundry partners in the future, Ola’s CEO Bhavish Aggarwal mentioned that the company plans to collaborate with a global tier I or II foundry, likely TSMC or Samsung, according to the report.

Ola’s AI lineup is expected to start with the Bodhi-1 AI chip, which is specifically designed for large-scale LLMs, with a focus on inferencing workloads, Wccftech suggests. Positioned as a low-to-mid-tier offering from Ola, the chip is said to be launched by 2026, followed by a more potent successor, the Bodhi-2, slated to be released in 2028.

According to Wccftech, it is worth noting that Ola also introduced an edge AI chip named Ojas, which is likely to be integrated into Ola’s next-generation electric vehicles. In addition, the Sarv-1, specifically designed for cloud computing, is expected to feature ARM Neoverse N3 cores, though this hasn’t been confirmed yet, the report states.

As the world’s fifth largest economy, India seems to be relatively slow in developing its own AI chips. China, the world’s largest developing country, has quite a long history in developing in-house AI chips.

Chinese tech giant Huawei is said to be testing its latest processor, the “Ascend 910C,” with internet companies and telecom operators recently. Reportedly, the company has informed potential customers that this new chip is comparable to NVIDIA’s H100 GPU, which cannot be directly sold in China.

On the other hand, Baidu’s foray into AI chips can be traced back to as early as 2011. After seven years of development, Baidu officially unveiled its self-developed AI chip, Kunlun 1, in 2018. T-Head, owned by Alibaba, introduced its first high-performance AI inference chip, the HanGuang 800, in September 2019.

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(Photo credit: Krutrim)

In early August, Taiwanese IC design giant MediaTek revealed its plan to unveil the Dimensity 9400 flagship series in October, designed to support most large language models on the market. Now more details regarding MediaTek’s ambition in AI have surfaced, as reports from Wccftech and Chinese media MyDrivers note that the company teams up with NVIDIA, targeting to launch their AI PC chip in the first half of 2025.

The reports indicate that the chip is currently in the design phase, with verification and sampling anticipated next quarter.

TrendForce projects that the Arm chip co-developed by MediaTek and NVIDIA, with adoption of Wi-Fi 7 and 5G, is slated to occupy a spot in the AI NB market since 2Q25, and initiate a new wave of technical innovation after 2025.

According to Wccftech, rumors about a custom chip from MediaTek for the AI PC market have been circulating for a while, and the excitement of the market skyrocketed when NVIDIA is reportedly joining the development.

The AI PC SoC is said to confront Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite series. Wccftech suggests that the chip will be manufactured using TSMC’s 3nm node, based on ARM architecture.

With AI giant NVIDIA involved, the SoC is also likely to achieve breakthroughs in the integrated graphics arena, the report says. In addition, the report also notes that given MediaTek’s expertise in creating power-efficient mobile chips like the Dimensity 9400, the company may be well-equipped to develop a chip for the AI PC segment that delivers both strong performance and impressive efficiency.

MediaTek and NVIDIA are also collaborating on automotive chips, with plans to launch their first chip in early 2025. MediaTek CEO Rick Tsai mentioned earlier that though details are yet to be disclosed, significant advancements in the automotive sector are expected between 2027 and 2028.

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(Photo credit: MediaTek)

On August 8, 2024, Black Sesame Technologies, a company specializing in AI chip for smart vehicles, was listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

Founded in 2016, Black Sesame is a provider of automotive-grade intelligent vehicle computing chips and chip-based solutions. The company has established research and sales centers in Wuhan, Silicon Valley, Shanghai, Chengdu, Shenzhen, Chongqing, and Singapore.

Currently, Black Sesame has launched two major product lines: the Huashan series designed for autonomous driving and the Wudang series focused on cross-domain computing.

The SoCs of Huashan A1000 family is designed for autonomous driving and supports BEV fusion algorithms for L3 and below application scenarios.

The Huashan® A1000 automotive-grade high-performance autonomous driving chip applies to L2+ and L3 level autonomous driving, which is currently the most widely used autonomous driving chip in Chinese mass-produced car companies and the only local chip platform capable of backing integrated domain controllers with a single chip.

It’s reported that Huashan A1000 chip has been in full mass production and adopted by several leading Chinese car manufacturers, including FAW Group, Dongfeng Group, Geely Group, and JAC Group, and has been used in mass-produced models including Lynk & Co 08, Hycan V09, Dongfeng eπ007, and its first pure electric SUV Dongfeng eπ008. The next-generation SoC, Huashan A2000, is currently under development and is expected to be launched in 2024.

The Wudang C1200 family of intelligent vehicle cross-domain computing chips was rolled out in April 2023. It has completed full testing after tape-out, with successful functional and performance verification, and sample chips are now available to customers.

As an “All in one” chip, the C1200 family targets multi-domain integration and cross-domain computing, covering core scenarios of intelligent vehicles with a single chip and thus empowering smart vehicles as a whole. Black Sesame expects to generate revenue from C1200 in 2024 and achieve mass production before 2025.

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(Photo credit: Black Sesame Technologies)

Automotive chip market, previously enjoying robust growth among the semiconductor sector, is now showing signs of slowing down.

According to a report from WeChat account DRAMeXchange, the major foundry UMC announced that it expects customer inventories in the communications, consumer electronics, and computer sectors to return to seasonal levels as usual in the second half of this year, and to reach healthy levels by the end of the year.

However, demand in the automotive end market remains weak, which may extend the period of inventory adjustment, with healthy levels anticipated only by the first quarter of next year.

Another foundry giant, TSMC, warned in its latest financial statement that the automotive market might decline this year in spite of a quarter-on-quarter increase of 5% in the revenue of its automotive electronics end market in 2Q24.

Meanwhile, the sluggish growth trend in the automotive chip market is also exemplified by the business performance of three leading automotive chip companies—Texas Instruments, STMicroelectronics, and NXP as they all saw declines in revenues.

Texas Instruments’ revenue for 2Q24 was USD 3.82 billion, down 16% YoY and the sales of its industrial and automotive business continue to decrease.

STMicroelectronics delivered revenue of USD 3.23 billion, down 25.3% YoY, with automotive business revenue falling short of expectation, offsetting growth in personal electronics sales.

NXP’s achieved revenue of USD 3.13 billion, down 5.2% YoY and its automotive business generated revenue of USD 1.728 billion, down 7.4% YoY, indicating the decline widened compared to the first quarter.

Despite the strong growth in the automotive chip market in 2023, the industry believes that as the overall automotive end market fails to advance as expected and there is an overcapacity in some automotive chip markets, automotive chip market growth will slow down in 2024, with the growth rate dropping to single digits in the coming years.

It’s learned that automotive semiconductor can be broadly categorized into microcontroller (MCU), computing chip (CPU, GPU, NPU, etc.), sensing chip (radar, image sensor, photoelectric sensor, etc.), memory chip (DRAM, NAND Flash, etc.), communication chip (CAN bus chip, connectivity chip, etc.), and power chip (IGBT, silicon carbide, etc.), among others.

In the view of the industry, current MCU and other chips are facing significant inventory pressure due to the declining automotive end market demand. However, power chip and autonomous driving chip continue to see strong demand driven by the wave of automotive electrification and intelligence.

Therefore, while the automotive semiconductor market may slow down in the short term, the automotive chip market still possesses growth potential in the long run with the continuous adoption of silicon carbide and autonomous driving chips in the increasingly popular EV and smart vehicle markets.

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(Photo credit: Pixabay)

In addition to the strong memory momentum which contributes to Samsung’s soaring profits in the second quarter, the tech giant’s progress on the foundry and chip business also attracts attention. According to its press release on July 31st, Samsung expects its foundry revenue growth to outpace the market in 2024 on the back of the full-scale mass production of second-generation 3nm GAA technology.

Earlier in May, Samsung announced the tape-out of its first 3nm mobile SoC, which used the Synopsys.ai EDA suite to verify the design. It signifies a major milestone as it is the first smartphone AP taped out with its 3nm GAA process. Before that, Samsung’s SF3E node has only been utilized for cryptocurrency mining chips.

The Korean semiconductor heavyweight now notes that the initial response to the new SoC for wearables, which features the industry’s first 3nm technology, has been favorable, and adoption of 3nm SoCs by key customers is expected to expand in the second half of the year. It also plans to ensure a stable supply of the Exynos 2500 for flagship models.

It is worth noting that another focus for Samsung in 2H24 will be the expansion for the application of 200-megapixel sensors from main wide camera to tele cameras. Samsung states it plans to expand sales of DDI products with the start of mass production of new models for a customer based in the US. According to an earlier report by The Verge, Apple may begin using Samsung camera sensors as early as 2026, ending Sony’s decade-long role as the exclusive supplier of the phone’s camera sensors.

Samsung also draws an ambitious roadmap, saying that it will expand its order intake for AI and HPC applications, targeting a fourfold increase in the customer base and a ninefold increase in sales by 2028 from the levels in 2023.

Samsung announced its financial results for the second quarter today, posting KRW 74.07 trillion in consolidated revenue and operating profit of KRW 10.44 trillion (approximately USD 7.5 billion). Its DS Division posted KRW 28.56 trillion in consolidated revenue and KRW 6.45 trillion in operating profit for the second quarter, posting a 94% and 1081% YoY growth, respectively.

Its Foundry Business saw improved earnings as a result of increased demand across applications. Due to higher orders for sub-5nm technology, the number of AI and HPC customers increased twofold from a year earlier. The Foundry Business also distributed the process development kit (PDK) for 2nm Gate-All-Around (GAA) technology to customers ahead of mass production in 2025.

On July 9^th, Samsung confirmed that it has received the first client for its 2nm process, and will provide turnkey semiconductor solutions using the 2nm process and the advanced 2.5D packaging technology Interposer-Cube S (I-Cube S) to Japanese AI company Preferred Networks.

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(Photo credit: Samsung)