'40-year automotive semiconductor market size, '4 times that of 20'
Adaptive solutions are needed to stay ahead of automotive trends
Xilinx Supports ISO 26262, ASIL B/D Products


The automotive semiconductor market is growing rapidly.

According to market research firm Statista, the automotive semiconductor market size is expected to grow from $45 billion in 2020 to $175 billion in 2040.

Automotive semiconductors are being used to promote new automotive technologies such as AI, electrification, autonomous driving, functional safety, connected cars, in-vehicle infotainment (IVI), advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), mobility as a service (MaaS), and transportation as a service (TaaS).

To take advantage of new technologies, automotive and electronics manufacturers must ensure that their products meet evolving system requirements. But the pace of change in the market has already outpaced semiconductor design cycles, and it will only accelerate in the future. Additionally, customer demands are constantly changing, requiring adaptive computing solutions that can implement a variety of products at both hardware and software levels.

On the 9th, Xilinx held an online press conference and took the time to explain its adaptive semiconductor strategy for automobiles.

“The automotive industry is undergoing a fundamental innovation with the introduction of various services that not only improve vehicle design efficiency but also provide safety and convenience to users,” said Yousef Khalilollahi, vice president of sales for Xilinx Asia Pacific. “For example, ADAS, which previously employed computer vision technology, has recently transitioned to AI technology, requiring Xilinx’s adaptive platform.”

Vice President Khalilolahi said that in addition to ADAS, adaptive automotive semiconductors are needed to implement autonomous driving, IVI, MaaS, and TaaS. He explained that this is related to the advancement of automotive hardware and software.

First, from a software perspective, AI technologies and the like are evolving at an incredibly fast pace, so if we try to implement these functions with fixed processors such as ASICs, there is a high possibility that the value of the solution will disappear by the time it is released. Additionally, from a hardware perspective, sensor technologies including lidar and radar continue to evolve, requiring adaptive silicon that allows for flexible configurations.

“Xilinx continues to deliver performance, power, and integration across a broad range of products from FPGAs to SoCs, MPSoCs, RFSoCs, and Adaptive Compute Acceleration Platforms (ACAPs), enabling the development of a diverse range of applications from low-end to high-end,” said Vice President Khalilollahy.

Additionally, he added, “It supports design flexibility to adapt to the rapidly evolving market through OTA (Over-The-Air) updates, etc.,” and “It responds to new trends in the automotive market by providing reliability of functional safety and quality standards that have been proven in the automotive, industrial, aviation, and space fields for a long time.”

Xilinx has shipped more than 160 million automotive semiconductors since 2002. Xilinx’s automotive products, including design tools, are certified to the automotive functional safety international standard ISO 26262 and support ASIL B/D applications. “Xilinx products have never been recalled and have had a low defect rate (PPM), so they have been well-received over the past four to five years,” said Vice President Khalilollahy.

The hot topic in the automotive world today is electrification. The European Union (EU) plans to ban the sale of internal combustion engine vehicles by 2025 at the earliest, or by 2040 at the latest. On the 7th, our government also announced the '2050 Carbon Neutrality Promotion Strategy' and stated that it would promote electric vehicle production by distributing electric vehicle chargers to 20 million households nationwide.

“Xilinx is focusing on four areas related to vehicle electrification: AI-based electric vehicle management ECUs, real-time multi-protocol communications, model-based algorithms, and silicon carbide (SiC) control loop support,” said Willard Tu, senior director of Xilinx Automotive.

In particular, “SiC is being rapidly adopted in electric vehicle motor drives and onboard charger systems to improve performance,” he explained, “SiC semiconductors are expected to account for 19% of the power semiconductor market in 2026.”

“The Xilinx Zynq 7000 family provides an Arm Cortex-A9-based software platform and a flexible programmable logic array to implement real-time response in complex motor control loop models,” he added. “The programmable logic provides the flexibility to reduce EMI, minimize power dissipation, and create IO maps tailored to specific platforms.”