Weekly News
Catalog
①Onsemi and BorgWarner expand partnership for SiC.
②NBS: China's automobile manufacturing industry recorded an increase of 13.1% in its added value.?
③Volkswagen brand plans to cut expenses in 2023.?
④Microchip released its first automotive-qualified 10BASE-T1S Ethernet devices.
⑤Cloud service providers perceive AMD's AI chip as an alternative to Nvidia.?
①Onsemi and BorgWarner expand partnership for SiC.
Onsemi and BorgWarner have announced that the two companies are expanding their strategic collaboration for silicon carbide (SiC), making the total agreement worth over $1 billion in lifetime value. BorgWarner plans to integrate Onsemi EliteSiC 1200 V and 750 V power devices into its VIPER power modules. The EliteSiC devices join a broad portfolio of onsemi products that are part of the long-standing strategic relationship between the two companies.
“First and foremost, Onsemi’s continuous and strategic investment in ramping SiC manufacturing capacity across its end-to-end supply chain gives us confidence in our ability to support the increasing demand for our solutions, now and in the future,” said Stefan Demmerle, vice president of BorgWarner Inc. and president and general manager, PowerDrive Systems.
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“By integrating EliteSiC technology in the traction inverter, end customers benefit from an increased gas-equivalent mile per gallon (MPGe), which helps alleviate range anxiety - one of the key barriers to EV adoption,” said Simon Keeton, executive vice president and general manager, Power Solutions Group, Onsemi. “With Onsemi’s chip-to-system level support and a track record of execution, we are able to provide industry-leading SiC-based solutions to BorgWarner at an accelerated pace to support its go-to-market requirements.”
②NBS: China’s automobile manufacturing industry recorded an increase of 13.1% in its added value.
On July 17th, the National Bureau of Statistics(NBS) released the latest data, indicating that China’s GDP for the first half of the year reached 59.3034 trillion yuan. Calculated at constant prices, this represents a year-on-year growth of 5.5%, which is 1.0% higher than the growth rate in the first quarter. In particular, the value-added of the national-scale industries increased by 3.8% year-on-year, with a growth rate of 0.8% higher than that of the first quarter. In terms of industries, the added value of the automobile manufacturing industry in the first half of the year increased by 13.1% year-on-year, with a growth rate second only to the electrical machinery and equipment manufacturing industry, which recorded a growth rate of 15.7%, far surpassing other significant industries.
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The first half of the year also recorded a two percentage point increase in the capacity utilization rate for the automobile manufacturing industry, reaching 72.7%. In contrast, the national industrial capacity utilization rate rose to 74.5%, of which the manufacturing capacity utilization rate is 74.8%.
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③Volkswagen brand plans to cut expenses in 2023.
Warning of tough times ahead, CEO of Volkswagen Passenger Cars, Thomas Sch?fer, addressed top VW employees this week, telling them, “This is the final wake-up call.” Sch?fer is calling for a short-term spending freeze to get costs under control. Last month, VW announced a new “Accelerate Forward” program designed to drive long-term profitability and performance. Part of the plans includes doubling VW passenger brand profit margins from around 3% currently to 6.5%. “We are letting the costs run too high in many years,”?Sch?fer proclaimed during an online management meeting this week. Through its Accelerate Forward strategy, VW expects to improve earnings by roughly $11.2B (10 billion euros). VW will focus on higher volume models to streamline production while reducing the number of variants to optimize efficiency further. For instance, VW gave an example of its new ID.7 having 99% fewer configuration options than a Golf 7 model.
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Looking ahead, Volkswagen will likely look to introduce cheaper, more basic models with smaller batteries, like the ID2 all concept starting under $27,000 (€25,000) with up to 279 miles (450 km) of range.
④Microchip released its first automotive-qualified 10BASE-T1S Ethernet devices.
Automotive designers are looking to replace legacy gateway subsystems with technology that can migrate applications to an Ethernet network to access information from the edge to the cloud easily. To provide OEMs with automotive-qualified Ethernet solutions, Microchip Technology (Nasdaq: MCHP) announced its first automotive-qualified Ethernet PHYs on July 13th. This family of 10BASE-T1S devices with AEC-Q100 Grade 1 qualification includes the LAN8670, LAN8671 and LAN8672.
“Microchip continues to prioritize connectivity solutions for the automotive industry with the expansion of its line of 10BASE-T1S products,” said Matthias Kaestner, vice president of Microchip’s automotive products business unit. “This new technology will connect the sensors and actuators used in the physical world all the way to the cloud, and it will enable a seamless Ethernet architecture everywhere.”
The ability to connect multiple Ethernet PHYs to a common bus line makes it simpler to implement automotive applications on a single, well-known architecture and saves implementation costs by reducing cabling and switch ports.
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Microchip was a key contributor in developing the standards with IEEE for the automotive-qualified 10BASE-T1S technology. This technology simplifies system design by expanding the reach of Ethernet to the devices that are typically at the very edge of the network.
⑤Cloud service providers perceive AMD's AI chip as an alternative to Nvidia
Large-scale cloud service providers are reportedly considering the MI300 series of AI GPUs from Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) as an alternative to GPUs from Nvidia, such as the H100, which are already in extremely short supply, according to industry insiders.
On June 14th, AMD released new details about the MI300X, an AI chip with 192GB of memory. It is set to be released this quarter and will begin mass production in the fourth quarter of 2023. As a result, AMD will become a major competitor to Nvidia's H100.
After rejecting a collaboration with Nvidia on DGX cloud products, the possibility of Amazon using AMD's AI chips in its projects has increased significantly. According to Reuters, AWS has not made any official statements regarding its plans to use the AMD MI300 chip. However, Dave Brown, Vice President of Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud, stated that the company is seriously considering adopting AMD chips.
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Thanks to AMD's strong business growth and significant investments in the AI field, its stock price has risen over 80% since the beginning of 2023. This growth far exceeds its competitors in the semiconductor industry, such as Intel, Micron, and TI.