Automotive Applications Taking More Share of Power Semiconductor Market

The automotive market has overtaken data processing to become the third-largest end-market for power semiconductor applications, an IHS report said Thursday. Infotainment and advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) are leading demand for semiconductors, with the 2015 automotive power IC category forecast to grow 8 percent over 2014, while discrete revenue is projected to remain flat over the period. To control research and development costs, automakers are developing shared designs, components, engineering and production platforms “and using the same electronic control units (ECUs) for many different platforms with the same features,” analyst Jonathan Liao said. “While over time modern cars have increased in size, suppliers prefer small and interchangeable ECU’s that can fit on various platforms, which help lower overall development costs, and expand the universe of target customers, for an improved return on investment,” Liao said. Rising consumer demand is pushing luxury car features into the nonluxury segment, including adaptive cruise control, blind-spot monitoring, connected traffic updates and sophisticated infotainment systems with voice command, also feeding the demand for power ICs, Liao said. “Features that were originally designed for Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Lexus and other luxury cars have very quickly found their way into the non-luxury market,” he said. Features that will spur further power IC adoption include Internet-connected cars, vehicle-to-vehicle communication, autonomous cars and connected car platforms from Apple and Google that rely on application processing speed and software, he said. “It is crucial for the ECUs to gather, process and respond to information in real time, for the safety and convenience of the driver,” Liao said. “Sophisticated power management solutions for power-intensive multi-core processors, baseband chipsets and sensor arrays can be implemented much more easily with power ICs,” he said.