Chinese automotive semiconductor developer SiEngine Technology Company announced it has opened a new research and development (R&D) facility in partnership with state-owned automaker FAW Group to co-develop new onboard chip applications, strengthening the existing collaboration between the two companies.
According to local reports the Collaborative Innovation Lab for Onboard Chip Applications, established within FAW’s main R&D centre in Changchun, aims to “accelerating the application of localized automotive-grade chips in intelligent vehicle solutions” - as the automaker looks to step up the roll out next generation smart cars.
Established in Wuhan in 2018, SiEngine has become a leading Chinese designer of automotive system-on-chips (SoCs). In 2021 it launched the country’s first 7nm automotive-grade smart cockpit chip, the SE1000, which has been adopted by leading Chinese automakers including Geely and FAW.
Last year SiEngine unveiled the 7nm StarLight autonomous driving chip, which is scheduled to go into production in 2025 and expected to feature in new vehicles from 2026. The company claims the new chip meets AEC-Q100 standards and has a “heterogeneous” multi-core architecture, pointing out that Its CPU has a 250K DMIPS computing power and its NPU has a 512 TOPS computing power.
FAW plans to unveil a new flagship electric vehicle featuring the SE1000 chip in March, while future collaboration between with SiEngine will increasingly be focused around the StarLight chip, for autonomous driving applications.
