On June 15, Giantec Semiconductor Corporation received approval from the board of the China Automotive Chip Industry Innovation Strategic Alliance (CACIISA) to become a formal alliance member. Giantec will participate in technical collaboration and resource-pooling with other members to help build an ecosystem for innovation in the industry.

The China Automotive Chip Industry Innovation Strategic Alliance

Supported jointly by the Ministry of Science and Technology and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, and run via the National Common Technology Innovation Platform under the direction of the National New Energy Vehicle Technology Innovation Center (NNEVTIC), CACIISA was formally established on September 19, 2020 in order to promote industry innovation.

Involving the cross-disciplinary integration of two major sectors—automotives and chips—CACIISA unites upstream and downstream players within the supply chain including businesses, university research institutes and industry bodies. Based on principles of “cross-disciplinary integration, win-win mutual growth, industry chain-forming and ecosystem alliance-forming,” its purpose is to establish an ecosystem for innovation in the Chinese automotive chip industry, breaking industry barriers and remedying industry weaknesses to achieve independent, secure, controllable and fast growth across the board, and thus to elevate China to the pinnacle of innovation and industrial strength in the global automotive chip industry. The Alliance coordinates the various key drivers of innovation—government, industry, research institutions and investment—with the aim of boosting international collaboration on automotive chips and associated core technologies while promoting the replacement of overseas products by domestic alternatives. The objective is to build an independent supply system and “internal circulation” infrastructure (domestically driven demand and supply) for key automotive chips, in order to ensure supply chain security and stability.

Current R&D status of Giantec’s automotive-grade chips

Giantec Semiconductor currently has three core product lines, EEPROM memory chips, voice coil motor (VCM) drivers and smart card chips, as well as deep reserves of technical expertise in the field of non-volatile memory (NVM). The company has built up a complete EEPROM product range including a full range of commercial-use, industrial-specification and vehicle-specification (A2) products. As a nationally approved producer of vehicle-specification chips in China, Giantec already offers a full range of AEC-Q100 A2-grade, automotive-grade EEPROM products, and is actively engaged in perfecting its technical expertise and product offering for the corresponding A1 and A0 grades. Planning and design are also underway for various grades of product complying with ISO26262 concerning functional safety. With annual shipments of nearly 10 million chips to the automotive electronics market, Giantec supplies Tier 1 and Tier 2 Chinese manufacturers with products whose applications include visual sensing, smart cockpits, smart networks and vehicle body control. The company counts leading automotive brands such as Tesla, Porsche, Hyundai, Toyota, Volkswagen, Mazda, Great Wall Motors and Geely among its end customers.

The company also has a complete quality management system in place and is accredited to both ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 standards for its quality-management and environmental systems, respectively. As a fabless design company, Giantec fully enforces IATF 16949 criteria in its product development, design and outsourced production management processes, and has been certified compliant with IATF 16949:2016, Quality Management Systems, by a third-party authority. Furthermore, the imminent introduction of stringent AEC-Q100 criteria for automotive-grade chip R&D and design offers complete assurance of the quality and reliability of Giantec’s vehicle-specification-grade chips.

As a formal member of CACIISA, Giantec will draw on the valuable technological resources and exchange and cooperation opportunities it offers, while focusing on perfecting its own product technologies and improving its R&D innovation capabilities in respect of automotive chips. The company will also seek close partnerships within the supply chain, collaborating with upstream and downstream partners to jointly address industry threats and opportunities, while promoting the establishment of upstream-downstream information distribution channels in the automotive chip supply chain. In the process, Giantec is helping to build an ecosystem of industry innovation that will boost the core competitiveness of the Chinese automotive chip industry.