The Drive to Innovate: Semiconductor Impact on Next-Gen Automotive Solutions | The Six Five Summit

Hello, and welcome to the six five Summit Automotive track session, the drive to innovate semiconductor impact on NextGen Automotive Solutions. I'm Olivier Blanchard, research director at the Futurum Group here with my co-hosts, S VP and principal analyst, and more insights strategy. We're thrilled to introduce Lonnie Mundell, VP of Sales Automotive Memory at Samsung Semiconductor, And today we'll be talking with Lonnie about how semiconductors are transforming the automotive sector.

Thanks for being here. And Lonnie, let's jump right in. So, question number one.

There's been a lot of discussion lately around software defined vehicles, and I'm wondering how do you see software defined vehicles reshaping the automotive industry? And specifically, what role does semiconductor play in the trend? Thank you, Olivier.

Yeah, definitely. We're seeing a push towards software defined vehicles using a centralized compute architecture. Um, basically centralized software systems will allow the manufacturers to add features and functions towards the driver experience and safety, um, and as well as allow them to gain monetization opportunities.

Um, they'll be able to deploy this because it's a software defined vehicle setting. They'll be able to deploy this over the air, which is a much different situation than from a hardware defined or a hardware focused design. Um, semiconductors are very crucial with, uh, components with respect to software-defined vehicles.

By 2030, they're gonna have about 45% of the overall between semi conduction electronics. That is, there'll be make up about 45% of the overall value of the vehicle. At Samsung, we have a large offering of high performance and low power memory, ultra bend with technology, telematics modems, SOCs image sensors, and even foundry services for custom silicon, providing a one-stop shop solution for our customers.

And looking at safety, uh, I wanted to ask you, when we look into the future of the automotive industry, what do you see as the exciting breakthrough capabilities are enabled by ai? Yeah, definitely. I think from my standpoint, uh, today, there is the adas products, um, but futuristically is the fully autonomous drive, um, including Robotaxis that will really rely heavily on the ai.

Most cars nowadays have, uh, lane keeping adaptive cruise control and parking assist, which are advanced safety features. Um, but with advanced ai future like, uh, level three, four, and five vehicles will function kind of like, uh, computers on wheels and they're gonna be generating up to 40 terabytes of data per hour. Um, from a Samsung standpoint, we have our memory products that are enabling car makers to meet the demand of increasing compute and storage needs.

With our image sensors, we are improving the safety by capturing real-time detection and sensing objects on the road. We also have our Samsung Foundry group that's pro providing chips from a, uh, adas and, and an eventually autonomous drive in their five nanometer product. And futuristically, they'll be moving down into four and two nanometers.

They also have a des, uh, design support team, uh, design support services that can help the customer design their own product as well. Cool. So speaking of gen ai, uh, with, uh, with Gen AI and other AI models making the headlines, that's every, that's what everybody keeps wanting to talk about.

How do you see the automotive industry adopting these technologies other than, uh, for autonomous driving? Uh, that's, um, so everybody's talking about edge AI lately. Mm-Hmm.

And, you know, in your mobile phone, you know, there's a lot of the edge ai, but we're also seeing that in the infotainment systems within the vehicle outside of home and work, a lot of times is spent in our vehicle and, uh, basically, you know, computing or commuting in their cars. We see the, uh, auto manufacturers introducing advanced features like high complexity, interactive voice commands, and real time route optimization to enhance the driver experience. Um, so basically the vehicle infotainment systems are requiring high bandwidth, high density memory, and with minimized latency, which is essential for these tasks.

Um, we also have a processor called our EXOS that already is enhancing user experiences such as driver monitoring and content generation using generative ai. Uh, moving on to another topic, I was wondering if you could talk to me, uh, about some supply chain innovation trends we've seen specifically around covid and the shortage of semiconductors and the disruption of the supply chain and how that made a huge impact on the automotive industry. Uh, and maybe you could tell me about what some of the changes, uh, automotive OEMs are implementing in the post covid era, uh, to the, and, and how semiconductor companies are supporting these changes.

Yeah. Um, unfortunately, or fortunately how you wanna look at it, I actually lived through those years as a semiconductor supplier, uh, dealing with the customers through the, through those trying times. And now OEMs are rethinking their sourcing strategy due to that source shortages.

Um, they're concentrating on two different areas, both on the design ownership, meaning they want to design the product themselves as well as direct sourcing. Working with the semiconductor companies directly, um, and making sure that they have the product. This will allow them more control on their entire supply chain.

So from a Samsung standpoint, our vertically integrated solutions, as well as our expanding footprint and globally is allowing us to support our customers, whether that's OEMs or tier ones to, uh, to help this supply situation in the future. We're also putting resources near our customers to ensure that, that we have direct support with them at all times. Uh, one of the examples that we have from our manufacturing expansion in is in the US we're increasing our wafer output in our Texas facility, our Austin, Texas facility.

Um, and we're also very excited to scale up our new fab site in Taylor, Texas, which is running that next generation foreign two nanometer wafers and as well as advanced packaging. Yeah, that was actually one of the questions I I wanted to ask you about, uh, how the impact of the CHIPS act on, uh, on bringing some of these, uh, semiconductor supply chains a little bit closer to, uh, to, to US manufacturing. So thanks for answering that.

Um, speaking of that, I, I have a, a an additional question for you since we have a little bit of time. And it's, uh, I was wondering if, even though you've already touched on this, if you can tell us a little bit about the, the unique and sort of differentiated approach that Samsung takes to the automotive industry, which is becoming a little bit crowded, lot semiconductor players, lots of opportunities, lots of competition. Where do you see Samsung moving forward, uh, with the, uh, the automotive industry?

What's, what's the, uh, what's the roadmap looking like? Yeah, I think from our standpoint, we have a very, uh, large portfolio of products that we can provide. And again, specifically around not just our memory, but with our SOCs and also from the, uh, Foundry team, and I mentioned this before, but our foundry team has the ability to allow the customer to design their own ship, which means that they can develop whatever features and functions that they want and then add around that all the other semiconductors to, to make their exact needs.

Whether that's, you know, higher density of memory, whether that's a bigger storage from a memory standpoint. Um, it just allows them to, to have the flexibility that they need from a future. Excellent.

Alright, well I think that's it. Uh, thank you so much for being with us Lonnie. And thank you, uh, on behalf of, uh, ancho and myself, uh, we hope, uh, to be able to do this again and we'll be looking, uh, looking forward to new announcements from, uh, Samsung on the automotive, uh, space.