BYD Semiconductor, the semiconductor business unit of Warren Buffett-backed Chinese electric car company BYD, announced Friday that its automotive MCU (microcontroller unit) installed base has exceeded 10 million units, marking a milestone in the local automotive chip sector.

(Source: BYD Semiconductor)

As the core of the internal computing and processing of automotive electronic systems, MUCs are the key to achieving automotive intelligence.

BYD Semiconductor was established in October 2004 and entered the industrial MCU field in 2007. It currently ranks first in China in terms of the market share of industrial touch MCUs.

BYD Semiconductor's business then extended from industrial MCUs to automotive MCUs and launched the first generation of 8-bit automotive MCUs in 2018 and the first generation of 32-bit automotive MCUs in 2019, with batch installation in BYD's full range of models.

BYD Semiconductor's automotive and industrial MCU chips have exceeded 2 billion in cumulative shipments to date, it says.

The technical difficulty of developing automotive MCUs is much greater than that of consumer-grade MCUs and industrial-grade MCUs due to the stringent requirements of functionality, safety, and reliability.

BYD Semiconductor overcomes the difficulties by increasing its investment. The MCU division has an R&D team of over 300 people, mastering 8051/32-bit ARM processor design and application, capacitive sensor technology, and digital/analog signal processing technology.

(Source: BYD Semiconductor)

It has applied for 328 domestic and foreign patents and 201 invention patents for automotive MCU products, BYD Semiconductor said.

In the future, BYD Semiconductor expects to launch automotive 8-bit ultra-low-power MCU series and high-end 32-bit M4F core MCU products.

On May 11 BYD announced that its board of directors had agreed to spin off its holding subsidiary BYD Semiconductor to ChiNext, a NASDAQ-style subsidiary of the Shenzhen Stock Exchange, for listing.

After the spin-off is completed, BYD's shareholding structure will not change and it will maintain control over BYD Semiconductor, the company said.

BYD Semiconductor will continue to engage in the research and development, production and sales of power semiconductors, intelligent control ICs, intelligent sensors and optoelectronic semiconductors.

BYD Semiconductor will focus on automotive semiconductors in the future and promote the development of semiconductor businesses in industrial, home appliance, new energy, consumer electronics and other fields, and is committed to becoming a new type of efficient, intelligent and integrated semiconductor supplier, the company said.

BYD said the spin-off will help BYD Semiconductor to enrich its capital strength, grasp the opportunity of the rise of China's semiconductor industry, establish an independent capital market platform and market-based incentive mechanism, and help the business to become stronger.