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Production through Samsung Electronics foundry 14-nano process
Nextchip, a fabless (semiconductor design) company specializing in automotive semiconductors, will actively improve its constitution by developing new products. Until last year, sales of Nextchip were mostly concentrated in Chinese and domestic markets (5 to 5). However, due to the influence of China's "Zero Corona" policy, nextchip sales in China this year were actually "zero." This is why Nextchip's performance has deteriorated recently. Nextchip plans to increase its share of European sales instead of China, which is highly uncertain, while seeking a way out through active new product development.
According to industries on the 11th, Nextchip is planning to introduce a prototype of 'Apache 6', a system-on-chip (SoC) for ADAS (Advanced Driver Support System) for automobiles, early next year.
An official from Nextchip said, "Apache 6 is a follow-up product of Apache 5 that applies deep learning-only neural network processing unit (NPU)," adding, "We originally planned to release a prototype at the end of this year, but we will release it early next year to increase its completeness."
In the first half of this year alone, Nextchip executed 14.4 billion won in R&D costs, and most of them were used to develop Apache 6. As such, Apache 6 is an ambitious work that Nextchip puts its heart and soul into.
A new automatic IP of ARM is introduced in Apache 6. ARM's IP for Apache 6 consists of CoreTex-A65AE core CPU, Mali-G78AE GPU, and subsystem IP. Apache 6 supports ISO26262, a semiconductor standard for vehicles. It performs functions such as multi-camera input AVM for AVP, deep learning-based object recognition, self-positioning using segmentation, VSLAM, and driving path search and tracking.
Apache 6 is equipped with various design assets (IPs) such as high-performance central processing units (CPUs), graphics processing units (GPU), and NPUs to increase computational and image data processing capabilities. The vehicle equipped with the Apache 6 may have a level 3 autonomous driving function that self-driving for a specific distance. Information in the surrounding environment is recognized using a map and free movement is possible.
Like Apache 5, Apache 6 is produced through Samsung Electronics' 14nm foundry process.
Along with the development of new products, Nextchip is making efforts to diversify its sales sources. Initially, Nextchip set a goal of reducing its share of Chinese sales to less than 20% by 2025. However, the company predicts that this goal will be realized sooner as the proportion of sales in Europe increases from next year.
In order to strengthen automobile safety regulations, Europe has decided to mandate ADAS installation in all new cars from 2024. Currently, Nextchip supplies ADAS SoC products to global automotive electronics companies, driver monitoring systems, and reverse braking assistance devices.
An official from Nextchip said, "Among the main products, ISP (Image Signal Processor), the market response is good for the 8 mega (M) ultra-high-resolution product introduced this time," and added, "From next year, our performance will return to normal."
Reporter Kang Seung-tae from Deeleck / https://www.thelec.kr/news/articleView.html?idxno=18315
