Chipmakers To Carmakers: Time To Get Out of the Semiconductor Stone Age

Long-time Slashdot reader BoredStiff shares this report from Fortune:

Moore's law of ever-increasing miniaturization seemingly never reached the automotive industry. Dozens of chips found in everything from electronic brake systems to airbag control units tend to rely on obsolete technology often well over a decade old. These employ comparatively simple transistors that can be anywhere from 45 nanometers to as much as 90 nanometers in size, far too large — and too primitive — to be suitable for today's smartphones.

When the pandemic hit, replacement demand for big-ticket items like new cars was pushed back while sales of all kinds of home devices soared. When the car market roared back months later, chipmakers had already reallocated their capacity. Now these processors are in short supply, and chipmakers are telling car companies to wake up and finally join the 2010s. 'I'll make them as many Intel 16 [nanometer] chips as they want,' Intel chief executive Pat Gelsinger told Fortune last week during his visit to an auto industry trade show in Germany.

Carmakers have bombarded him with requests to invest in brand-new production capacity for semiconductors featuring designs that, at best, were state of the art when the first Apple iPhone launched. 'It just makes no economic or strategic sense,' said Gelsinger, who came to the auto show to convince carmakers they need to let go of the distant past. 'Rather than spending billions on new 'old' fabs, let's spend millions to help migrate designs to modern ones....'

Reliability plays a major concern. Most systems in cars are safety-critical and need to perform in practically every situation regardless of temperature, humidity, vibrations, and even minor road debris. With so much at stake, tried and true is better than new and improved....

If semiconductor suppliers like Intel and Qualcomm have their way, however, the days of the auto industry relying on these cheap commodity chips are numbered.
The article cites a prediction that 10% of pre-pandemic car production could be eliminated due to chip shortages — and includes this quote from a press briefing by the Volkswagen Group's head of procurement.

'Because of a 50-cent chip, we are unable to build a car that sells for $50,000.'

Read more of this story at Slashdot.