Gowin Automotive-grade FPGAs Pass SAIC's 2500h Heat Resistance Tests

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Dec. 17, 2021 -- GOWIN Semiconductor Corp. and Shanghai Automobile Transmission announced that GOWIN Semiconductor’s automotive-grade FPGAs passed SAIC’s 2500h heat resistance test, high and low heat cycling resistance with load test, heat impact test, vibration impact test, and 30,000km vehicle test.

FPGAs are becoming a required component in automotive development with the increased focus on EVs (Electronic Vehicles) as well as dramatic innovations in Advanced Driving Assistance System (ADAS), Autonomous Driving (AD), LIDAR, In-vehicle Infotainment (IVI) and Driver Information (DI) applications. As a result, automotive manufacturers are performing independent certification tests on Gowin’s AEC-100Q Automotive qualified devices.

According to Huajing Industry Research Institute, the global automotive semiconductor market is expected to reach $65.1 billion in 2022, accounting for nearly 12% of the global semiconductor market becoming the fastest growing semiconductor segment. FPGAs provide flexibility and parallel processing capabilities resulting in wide range of uses; especially for the development of autonomous driving technology. This has significantly increased the FPGA market share in the automotive segment, which is expected exceed $2.5 billion by 2025.

“GOWIN’s automotive-grade FPGA has passed a variety of SAIC’s tests such as heat resistance test, high and low heat cycling resistance with load test, 30,000km vehicle test. and so on,” said Li Yu, chief engineer of Shanghai Automobile Transmission. “GOWIN’s FPGA automotive chips featuring high reliability can largely alleviate the severe shortage of such chips faced by domestic auto companies in these applications, and can be responded by local suppliers quickly with quality technical support.”

TP Wang, chief technology officer of GOWIN Semiconductor, said, “It is quite challenging to reach or approach the failure rate of automotive-grade 0 PPM. Strict industry standards are abided in the entire quality control of automotive chips including designing, manufacturing, packaging and testing. GOWIN planned its process node selection and design accordingly; our FPGAs have passed the automotive certification and have mass production in several different vehicles being actively manufactured. GOWIN has additional automotive-grade FPGAs under certification and will launch additional automotive-grade chips based on more advanced process node next year.”

Shanghai Automobile Transmission (SAGW) is a wholly owned subsidiary of SAIC Motor, with total assets of ¥17.2 billion, annual sales revenue of over ¥10 billion, and annual sales of more than 3.5 million gear assemblies. In recent years, SAGW has accelerated product structure adjustments, especially increased investment in automatic gearing system. Its DCT360 is the first batch-produced dual-clutch automatic gear with fully independent intellectual property rights in China.

As the only high-tech enterprise with both dry and wet dual-clutch automatic gearing systems in China, SAGW has become an OEM supplier and an important strategic partner of emerging vehicles and famous automobile groups at home and abroad such as SAIC Passenger Cars, SAIC-GM, SAIC Volkswagen, SAIC-GM-Wuling, SAIC Maxus, Dongfeng Nissan, Chery Automobile, BAIC Motor, Hezhong Automobile, etc. At present, SAGW is one of the largest Chinese passenger car production and manufacturing enterprises, with the domestic market share of about 15%.