The big automotive semiconductor problem

https://asianometry.substack.com/p/the-big-automotive-semiconductor

by picture • 4 years ago

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asianometry.substack.com

bayindirh9• 4 years ago

From the article:

Mobile phone SOCs integrate a substantial amount of function right onto the chip. Why hasn’t that been the case for the car?

Because your mobile phone SoC is not certified for -20/+80 degrees Celsius, copious amount of vibration, error-free operation on many environments (incl. inputs with wrong voltages, shorts, etc.), and have a lifetime of 10+ years with the same performance characteristics.

Your car is running a real-time simulation of your engine to keep itself operational, and it's a much serious business than running Android or iOS.

More information: https://media.ccc.de/v/32c3-7331-the_exhaust_emissions_scand...

turbinerneiter• 4 years ago

How does functional integration interfere with robustness?

JRKrause• 4 years ago

One method of making a chip 'tougher' is to physically increase the size of the semiconductor elements (e.g. transistors, FETs). This would seem incompatible with highly-integrated ICs.

bayindirh9• 4 years ago

The discrete components are designed, tested and verified after a long stint and their specs are frozen. It's a bit like space hardware. You verify an older CPU design can work reliably in space, and certify that processor. Then, you use the same foundation for a decade or so.

It's same with automotive industry. You have a well defined and certified stack from Delco, Bosch, Delphi, etc. and you can trust that hardware. Integration makes you return back to square one.

I remember Toyota tried unifying some control units into a single box, and 5-6 years considered realistic if not a little optimistic.

pySSK3• 4 years ago

They do however use SoCs for HMI/head-units/carputers now however.

The bigger reason is just the nature of automotive development. Every part is developed by a specced or sourced by different teams and outsourced to a different Tier 1/2/3. Things are designed to be modular, so if you pick Option A for something, it might use ECU A, and if you pick Option B, they might pack a whole different ECU B. Also, every ECU is costed down to only support the intended application, so ECU A likely doesn't have the extra bandwidth to add on extra features for Option B.

Also, none of this is decided or developed at the same time, so you have all the different features and ECUs developed throughout. Some things are changed mid program. Some things carry over from previous programs, so it's usually just easier to go your own way and not work with other teams on combining features.

Every automotive OEM has a person who comes up with the brilliant and cost saving idea of combining ECUs. I know 4 such people from different OEMs but they have all failed for some of the reasons mentioned above.

nudgeee• 4 years ago

SoCs in head-units would still be automotive qualified variants (temperature grade, etc).

sandworm1012• 4 years ago

> SoC is not certified for -20/+80 degrees Celsius

That is basically the operating range of the average graphics card these days. Not many people go sub-ambient with their cooling but no graphics card would complain if they did. The actual silicon is perfectly fine with such temperatures. The only real issue is the external cooling rig, a classic engineering problem that any car company shouldn't have a problem solving. A water cooler tied to the vehicle's coolant loop would easily cap the upper temperature range at water boiling points. A car engine has plenty of power available for fans or even air conditioning if necessary. Hide the controller chips somewhere in the passenger compartment and the humans will die of heat before the silicon.

bayindirh9• 4 years ago

I’m not talking about processor temperatures. The temperatures I’m talking about are ambient/enclosure temperatures. So, the board, and all integrated components will be at least that ambient temperature, and they’ll work without any transient errors.

Also this means, no solder joints or any other component won’t act funky.

A transient error in your GPU is a one pixel blip. In an ECU, that’s a power loss event in best case.

ptsneves2• 4 years ago

In low temperatures you start having issues with moisture saturating the air. Things get wet out of nowhere. There are also electrolytic capacitors which are water based so these need to be ruled out as well. Given air has at any given time a lot of water and water goes through a phase change at sub zero i find the comparison quite invalid.

hulitu2• 4 years ago

-20 ° C - + 80 °C is for keyfobs. For ECUs in the passenger compartment is -40°C - 85 °C and for ECUs in the engine compartment is -40 °C - 105 °C.

shadowpho• 4 years ago

Also... mobile phone SoC are made in much higher quantities then car chips: there are much more phones shipped then cars. Therefore R&D costs per unit are significantly lower with phone chips and you can spend more.

ryanobjc• 4 years ago

When you buy semiconductors on digikey or whatever, there are several different 'classes' of performance. Everyone imagines milspec being the top one, and it's true, but for most people the ideal class is 'automotive'... Because precisely of what the parent said: tolerances of temperatures to 140F or more. Think of a car sitting in a baking parking lot in Phoenix, no shade.

You don't build semiconductors for that purpose by using 10nm process then adding a lot more redundancies when all you need is a simple opamp. You instead build the thing beefy and resistant to the environment.

And all the excitement over new chip plants by TSMC etc, won't do a thing for these automotive applications.

xyzzy213• 4 years ago

There are classes ABOVE mil-spec. These are several "Space grade" classes above mil-spec which have far wider temperature and radiation ranges.

rasz• 4 years ago

Your car is running a real-time simulation of your engine to keep itself operational, and it's a much serious business than running Android or iOS.

Lets not exaggerate :) ECU reads a bunch of sensors, does some mild compute, uses that to do a table lookup, interpolates and slaps the result into actuators. 8bit 10MHz is enough to accomplish this task.

bayindirh9• 4 years ago

These are not my words. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30875680

calvinmorrison6• 4 years ago

Your car is running a real-time simulation of your engine to keep itself operational, and it's a much serious business than running Android or iOS.

Well, it takes some parameters, goes into a lookup table and decides how much timing to retard, or fuel to give, and probably has a o2 sensor, checks knocking, etc. All done on pretty barebones 80's tech.

bayindirh9• 4 years ago

You're right on the tables part, but these are the words of the guy who worked on BMW for 14 years, who's on the video.

And, as a person who's doing simulation coding, I tend to behave to him about that.

The relevant part starts here: https://media.ccc.de/v/32c3-7331-the_exhaust_emissions_scand...

geocrasher• 4 years ago

This article does a good job outlining why these systems can't just be replaced with a Raspberry Pi or an Arduino: Durability. At one point I was interested in replacing the ECU in my old '88 Suburban. The ECU is probably the only "real" bit of electronics in the whole vehicle. And yet after almost 35 years it's still doing fine. The Arduino based ECU I was looking into, as it turns out, is a great hobby project, but not so good for reliability due to the harsh conditions.

Still, I think electronics in modern vehicles are completely over the top, but then again... I drive a 30+ year old Suburban. I'm prone to thinking that way :D

dylan6042• 4 years ago

The space shuttle used a hardened 386 (or something similar) that cost a bazillion dollars. The drone currently on Mars used commidity off the shelf chips (snapdragon IIRC). The harsh conditions thing is not something to laugh at, but I also think we might have over-engineered somethings a bit.

Retric4• 4 years ago

The surface of Mars being further from the sun and inside an atmosphere has vastly fewer issues with radiation.

Isinlor2• 4 years ago

SpaceX is also using commodity hardware, but they duplicate it 3x with majority vote for error correction.

tablespoon• 4 years ago

The space shuttle used a hardened 386 (or something similar) that cost a bazillion dollars.

Their main computers were a custom variant of the IBM 360 mainframe. They also duplicated it 5x: 4x with majority vote for error correction, plus a backup running separately-developed software.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_System/4_Pi

The drone currently on Mars used commidity off the shelf chips (snapdragon IIRC). The harsh conditions thing is not something to laugh at, but I also think we might have over-engineered somethings a bit.

It should be noted that drone is 1) an engineering experiment and 2) no one will die if it malfunctions, so they can afford to be a bit sloppier.

technothrasher• 4 years ago

I designed a drop in replacement ignition ECU for Ferrari 308 cars from the 1980's (the Magnum PI model), as after almost 40 years a lot of them are now failing. When I started the project, I had no idea how miserable an environment the car actually was. It wasn't hard to get a prototype that basically worked, but I had to go through quite a few revisions before I got something that could withstand the torture of everyday use (and things like electrically dirty jump starters that would completely fry my units until I put a protective power supply in it against +/-100VDC surges.)

calvinmorrison6• 4 years ago

My daily is also an 88. It's running very standard Bosch of that era. At some point I took my 93 (same model) and swapped it with newer fuel management, ecu, etc out of a 2005 Saab. Same valve cover allows you to the stock coils and setup, a timing sensor solves that, and boom, good to go.

Well sorta, turns out the 88 is far more reliable and consistent - except for a few hard to find parts... namely the distributor is a total piece of crap after that many years... and it's not very efficient. I get 50% more performance and 50% more gas milage on the uprated one.

Difference in reliability is probably... once every 25k versus once every 50k though.

Those bosch systems were all over volvo, saab, porsche, VW, Audi, etc and are dead reliable but not very hackable.

chmod6006• 4 years ago

What devices are left that are fairly normal (that normal people might interact with in a given week), mechanical or electromechanical, have at least modest complexity, and have no microchips?

Locks? Guns? What else?

EDIT: perhaps an extra requirement that it's fairly durable, i.e. easily lasts ten years of normal use.

EDIT2: maybe it should also fit the requirement that it's a current model in production and that you don't have to go out of your way to find a non-semiconductor version.

stevenwoo• 4 years ago

Is gas water heater complex enough?

frosted-flakes7• 4 years ago

Gas water heaters often have control boards and displays with buttons. The only type that might not are the low-efficiency type with a pilot flame and room air intakes—but even those usually have forced exhaust fans that require some sort of smarts to know when to turn on.

takk3092• 4 years ago

Older clothes washing machines, maybe? Though, they are getting replaced by machines with ic type controllers too.

selectronics• 4 years ago

Mechanical watches fit the bill here. Not everyone has them, but they are common enough

frosted-flakes7• 4 years ago

Push lawnmowers, dirtbikes, or chainsaws typically do not have microchips, and they are all quite complex. Also, old elevators often had purely relay logic, and I've heard that it is often more cost-effective to repair old elevators than to replace them outright, so if you live in a really old building the elevator might still be click-clacking away.

Then there are washing machines and dryers. Most new models are stuffed to the guts with computer chips, but older styles are still available, new (Speed Queen) or used (appliance refurbishment shops). Old ones are purely electro-mechanical, with some rather ingenious timer boards that do a lot with only a few contacts, a tiny motor, and a large resistor.

(I helped repair an old dryer a few months ago: the large resistor is for the dryer's auto dry mode. The wetter the clothes, the more power the heating coils will draw through the resistor, which lowers the voltage of the power the timer motor receives, slowing it down. Once the clothes start getting dry, the voltage goes back up and the timer speeds up again.)

chmod6006• 4 years ago

"dirtbikes, or chainsaws typically do not have microchips"

Interesting, good examples.

"The wetter the clothes, the more power the heating coils will draw through the resistor, which lowers the voltage of the power the timer motor receives, slowing it down. Once the clothes start getting dry, the voltage goes back up and the timer speeds up again."

Sounds like this kind of ingenuity is on its way out, though. I expect the vast majority of washers/dryers have semiconductors in today.

sidpatil• 4 years ago

Push lawnmowers, dirtbikes, or chainsaws typically do not have microchips, and they are all quite complex.

Is this still the case for the newer battery electric variants of these tools? The battery itself will have microchips for the BMS, and if those tools are using BLDC motors, those motors will contain a controller likely implemented with microchips.

pySSK3• 4 years ago

Obligatory Sunbeam Radiant Control toaster video since you mentioned old appliances: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OfxlSG6q5Y&ab_channel=Techn...

aidenn03• 4 years ago

Can opener

Stapler

Loud-speakers

Shop vac

chmod6006• 4 years ago

"Loud speaker" surprises me. Are you sure they don't use semiconductors for amplification?

HeyLaughingBoy3• 4 years ago

There's nothing mechanically or electrically complex about a speaker. It's a coil and a magnet attached to a bit of paper/plastic.

TacticalCoder• 4 years ago

EDIT: perhaps an extra requirement that it's fairly durable, i.e. easily lasts ten years of normal use.

Moka pot / press to do coffee. Lasts ten years easily.

All my tools and powertools. Some of them are old, really, really old (I've got my "favorite" screwdriver which is 30 years old). Some are manual, some require electricity.

Using daily my mechanical watch and my floorstanding loudspeakers which others mentioned. The loudspeakers are hooked to an amp to DAC to computer, so the "chain" is not exactly microchip free though.

EDIT: also various types of chimneys and stoves are still microchips free. Although there's a move towards freaking "smart" pellets stove that require electricity, WiFi, that are noisy but, hey, they're programmable. Thanks but no thanks. Good old chimney for me.

takk3092• 4 years ago

Tools for sure, power and hand. Aside from a voltage regulating circuit most power tools are super simple, make a thing spin to cut other things. I also love using proper hand tools like a plane or hand saw.

HeyLaughingBoy3• 4 years ago

Interesting question.

* it's surprising how many dishwashers still use spring-loaded timers to sequence their operations. Although at this point mine is 19 years old so maybe that doesn't count.

* Likewise, my iron filter is sequenced by a mechanical timer (run off an electric motor), but my water softener's controller is fully electronic.

* A lot of houses still have mechanical mercury thermostats.

* The flush valve in your toilet tank is completely mechanical and surprisingly complex. Once you take it completely apart you realize that there's more to it than just a float that shuts off a valve.

* I'm always amazed by the centrifugal clutches in weed whackers and small gas-powered lawn appliances.

Should be more things I can come up with...

chmod6006• 4 years ago

Toilets are a great example, thank you.

linksnapzz5• 4 years ago

A lot of houses still have mechanical mercury thermostats.

yeah, the houses that have heat. ask an HVAC guy about the new digital thermostats. I'm not even talking about the Nest etc. smart home ones, just the basic new digital ones that croak after three years. Keep the mercury-switch ones as long as you can.

aimor• 4 years ago

A lot of musical instruments come to mind.

Also many plumbing related things in a house such as faucets, temperature shutoff valves, toilets.

Manual kitchen gadgets are usually pretty simple but still interesting. Peelers and slicers, pasta machines, oil expeller, scales.

pas4• 4 years ago

I'm still mesmerized by microwave ovens. Sure, all of them now come with a chip, but that part is guaranteed 100% shit (I mean who the fuck designs these unergonomic monsters anyway!?)

But the magnetron in them is complex, has to be machined to a high precision, yet they are a pretty old piece of completely analog technology.

frosted-flakes7• 4 years ago

Regarding microwave oven ergonomics, the best one I've seen doesn't have old-school dials, but a touch-sensitive slider bar. You may think this is bad, but it works very, very well. The front of the microwave has the time display, the time slider bar, and two buttons: stop/cancel and start/+30sec. Open the door and there are a few auto cook options and power level options. There is no number keypad at all; the slider bar gives you both very fine and coarse-grained control, depending on how fast you slide across it. It's all very intuitive, and I was very impressed with it.

https://www.lg.com/us/cooking-appliances/lg-LMC0975ST-counte...

megablast• 4 years ago

Bicycles. The greatest form Of transport ever created.

chmod6006• 4 years ago

Good one.

After reading this thread my list is:

* Toilets

* Bicycles

* Water heaters

* Locks

* Guns

The rest seem either a little too specialized, simple, or already in the process of being replaced by things with microchips.

A few of these may be replaced as well (locks?), but it's not quite happening yet.

JKCalhoun• 4 years ago

Automakers found that mechanical, hydraulic or pneumatic controls failed to achieve enough accuracy and consistency over each vehicle's usage life to meet these emissions tests. This was especially the case as the car aged.

Decades ago, I owned an old Alfa Romeo that incorporated a complicated cam system to control the oxygen ratio to the fuel injection system. More complex than your typical 1-dimensional function of a cam, this cam was "two-dimensional" in its output. The cam follower was able to slide along the axis of the cam based on something or another (RPM? temperature?) and the profile of the cam varied from one end to the other. Now there's a pretty wild "mechanical computer".

A mechanic though told me that over time the middle of the cam would wear — a kind of "saddling" — and engine performance (and probably emissions) would suffer.

throwaway0a5e2• 4 years ago

Decades ago, I owned an old Alfa Romeo that incorporated a complicated cam system to control the oxygen ratio to the fuel injection system. More complex than your typical 1-dimensional function of a cam, this cam was "two-dimensional" in its output. The cam follower was able to slide along the axis of the cam based on something or another (RPM? temperature?) and the profile of the cam varied from one end to the other.

V-tech, yo.

linksnapzz5• 4 years ago

You laugh, but the 1980 Alfa Romeo Spider (with the Arese DOHC 4) was the first regular-production car with variable valve timing. This might actually be what the grandparent post is referring to-it had a mechanical variator attached to the intake camshaft to adjust the phase of valve opening....

saiya-jin• 4 years ago

Every car engine loses gradually power with wear. Top gear famously showed this multiple times with their older car episodes. Usually it was in 20-30% range.

Basically new car is a 100% system and from first kilometer / month of ageing and exposition to elements various items go down the hill. Each car type had its own set of reasons for that, but result was +-same.

dclowd99014• 4 years ago

Sounds a bit like BMW’s VANOS or Honda’s Vtec. Variable cam timing is super cool tech and a huge reason newer cars are so much faster than old cars.

unregistereddev• 4 years ago

If described correctly, it is a different concept. Variable cam timing in the context of VANOS / Vtec / VVT refers to variable timing on the camshaft that controls valves.

This sounds different, and I think it refers to mechanical fuel injection. Several automakers experimented with mechanical fuel injection in the 80's and early 90's, but I think the concept died pretty quickly. It was rather complex, failure prone, and less efficient than EFI.

dclowd99014• 4 years ago

It would be a misconception to look at your standard internal combustion car as a fundamentally mechanical device. Today's cars are some of the most complex electronic systems mankind has ever made.

As a car restorer, mechanic and enthusiast, yes. This is also why bringing a car in for service has ballooned in cost over recent years. Oddly, it’s become remarkably _easy_ to chase down a problem in a car because the systems will just tell you exactly what’s wrong. Now it’s just a huge time sink to actually fix the problem because it’s probably buried deep in the gubbins of the car and the parts are very costly.

linksnapzz5• 4 years ago

The current practice of having a $3 part that fails after 40,000 miles, then needs $2000 worth of labor to replace, makes me want to murder certain vehicle line execs at certain companies...glares in the direction of Munich...

froh3• 4 years ago

My personal pet peeve theory is that automotive engineering missed the memo that the hard part of software based systems is integration and remote dependencies.

All their engineering and supply structures have evolved from mass producing mechanical marvels which happen to have a few electrical and electronic E/E components, marvels and components which are hard to manufacture but simple to integrate ("plug together", essentially).

At the core, their thinking goes "Creating components is expensive. Putting components together is cheap. Also minimize prototype scrap with extensive planning and scrupulous list checking processes. If parts don't work together you didn't plan well enough."

And that leads to a culture that is the exact opposite of CI/CD, fail early, fail often, rebase or reintegrate continuously.

Thus in the automotive SPICE and six sigma world it takes 2-3 years to replace an ECU with another one with sufficiently similar specs.

Also, they prioritize "economies of scale" over flexibility and time to market.

For example a "gateway controller", a router and switch, routing and switching between ethernet and CAN, with some spare CPU cycles for centralized functions? 2-3 years. Now let's say you need 3 million of these devices per year (Volkswagen group, Toyota, Stellantis each make ~10 million vehicles y/y), and you'll produce cars with that same device for 5 years? Then cost savings of 10$ per device are equal to 150 Mio bucks. As a supplier you'll happily put 20 people on saving those 10 bucks on the "bill of materials" --- not adding cool features, no, saving some RAM, CPU, ... the boring and non-innovative side of "economies of scale"

Now the device is cheaper but maxed out. So your OEM won't ship new functions. the OEM is also later to market. And the OEM can't replace the part as easily because the spare would have to be as damn dirt cheap as the original. Not alone would you have to redo all these micro optimizations --- the savings from the previous design wouldn't materialize against the lower volume any more.

And that is, in a nutshell, imnsho, why automotive asks for more of the old parts instead of switching to a new board design with a next-gen CPU...

To summarize: automotive deals time to market and flexibility for "economies of scale" and "automotive grade quality processes".

Contrast that to an OEM who thinks like a software CEO... the software CEO understands that the secret to high quality is in CI/CD with outstanding test and validation pipelines. You seek to change any part of your system just at marginal cost. And then you can replace some ECU within 6 months.

The big automotive semiconductor problem

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