▲ASRA Board of Directors. From left, Ryobun Kato, Director of Miraise Technologies, Masashige Mizuyama, Executive Vice President of Panasonic Automotive Systems, Yosho Mato, General Manager of Honda, Keiji Yamamoto, Chairman of the Board, Shinji Kawahara, Managing Director (DENSO Senior Advisor), Takashi Yoshizawa, Senior Executive Officer of Nissan Motor Co., Ltd., and Maichi Yoshioka, Executive Officer of Renesas Electronics (Photo source: My Navi)

Full-scale development is planned to begin in 2025 and product level verification is planned to be completed in 2028.
No examples of chiplet vehicle applications… Various performance verification tasks centered on reliability are required

Japan is starting full-scale development to apply chiplet technology to automotive SoCs.

On March 29, the Japan Automotive Advanced SoC Technology Research Association (ASRA) was selected as the contractor for “advanced SoC chiplet research and development” by the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO), and announced plans to begin full-scale development of automotive chiplets after 2025.

ASRA aims to define requirements for automotive system architecture, clarify automotive-specific requirements, define HW/SW requirements and verify architecture as requirements for chiplet SoCs by 2024 to apply chiplet technology to automotive SoCs, and solidify the requirements and targets and detailed development plan by 2024.

It was agreed that full-scale development would begin after 2025, and it seems likely that they will first manufacture and evaluate prototype chips based on chiplet technology for data centers, identify any performance and functions that are lacking for automotive use, and develop technologies to supplement them.

Finally, by 2028, we aim to complete the requirements for the vehicle system architecture and design tools based on chiplet SoC requirements.·We plan to complete the development of the environment and the product level verification of the chiplet SoC itself.

Specifically, it aims to build a technology that enables scalable performance changes through parallel arrangement of identical chiplets, such as multi-core.

The standard that serves as the basis for the chiplet being developed is said to be compliant with UCIe, but since the actual CPUs and GPUs, etc. require different performances for each automobile manufacturer, ASRA reported that the specification of chiplet technology and the components of each processor core are areas of competition for each automobile manufacturer.

In addition, there has been no example of applying chiplets to vehicles so far, and it was agreed that work is needed to verify various performances required for automobiles, focusing on reliability.

NEDO's subsidy is expected to amount to 1 billion yen if the 2024 results are achieved, and it is understood that the subsidy amount for the following year will be determined each year based on the results.

The research and development system consists of the 'Vehicle System Architecture Working Group' centered around engineers from automobile manufacturers, the 'SoC Architecture Working Group' centered around engineers from Tier 1 manufacturers, and engineers from semiconductor-related manufacturers.

ASRA has organized 130 internal chiplet technology working groups of three sizes, and is also working on international standardization, wafer prototyping, and package assembly through partnerships with external companies and organizations.

Meanwhile, ASRA is a technology research association established on December 1, 2023 for the purpose of research and development of chiplet technology toward the realization of in-vehicle HPC that realizes further intelligence and electrification of automobiles.

Suzuki and Hitachi Astemo joined ASRA on March 28, bringing the total number of participating companies to 14. It happened.

Other ASRA member companies include automobile manufacturers Toyota Motor Corporation, Subaru, Nissan Motor Co., Honda, and Mazda; electrical components manufacturers Denso and Panasonic Automotive Systems; and semiconductor manufacturers Socionext, Cadence Design Systems of Japan, Synopsys of Japan, Miraise Technologies, and Renesas Electronics.