Bosch Unveils One Billion Euro Chip Manufacturing Facility in Germany

[AleksandarK]

Robert Bosch GmbH, commonly known as just Bosch, has today unveiled the results of the company's biggest investment ever. On Monday, the company has unveiled its one billion Euro manufacturing facility, which roughly translates to 1.2 billion US Dollars. The manufacturing plant is located in Dresden, Germany, and it aims to supply the leading self-driving automobile companies with chips that are in great demand. As the main goal for the plant is to manufacture chips for the automotive industry, this new 7,200 m² Dresden facility is supposed to provide car makers with Application-Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs) for power management and tasks such as triggering the automatic braking system of cars.

The one billion Euro facility was funded partly by the funds coming from the European Union investment scheme, which donated as much as 200 million Euros ($243 million). The goal of the plan is to start with the manufacturing of chips for power tools as early as July and start production of automotive chips in September. All of the chips will be manufactured on 300 mm wafers, which offers a major improvement in quantity compared to 200 and 150 mm wafers currently used by Bosch. The opening of this facility will surely help with the global chip shortages, which have even hit the automotive sector.


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[TheLostSwede]

No mention of the manufacturing node then?
I guess this will no smaller than 12nm, as most automotive parts aren't on cutting edge nodes.

 

[Chomiq]

Good move, well timed too.

 

[Robin Seina]

It seems like one of AMDs/Global Foundry's old foundries. And yes, no mention of node, though it could be 28nm SOI or anything better, depends from whom did the Bosch licensed the technology.

 

[TheLostSwede]

It seems like one of AMDs/Global Foundry's old foundries. And yes, no mention of node, though it could be 28nm SOI or anything better, depends from whom did the Bosch licensed the technology.

Nah, brand new, was meant to open in early 2020.
Seems to be nothing smaller than 65nm, which is a lot bigger than I expected.

Bosch's Dresden wafer fab prepares for production

Automotive component supplier Robert Bosch has started running wafers through its 300mm wafer fab in Dresden, Germany.

www.eenewsanalog.com

 

[Robin Seina]

Nah, brand new, was meant to open in early 2020.
Seems to be nothing smaller than 65nm, which is a lot bigger than I expected.

Bosch's Dresden wafer fab prepares for production

Automotive component supplier Robert Bosch has started running wafers through its 300mm wafer fab in Dresden, Germany.

www.eenewsanalog.com

65 nm is too big for automobile chips. Also, if I remember correctly, 300mm wafer size came with 28nm node

 

[R-T-B]

65 nm is too big for automobile chips. Also, if I remember correctly, 300mm wafer size came with 28nm node

Any particular reason 65nm is too big for the basic tasks auto chips run?

 

[The red spirit]

That does remind me of AMD's "Diffused in Germany" line until FX chip era.

 

[silentbogo]

Any particular reason 65nm is too big for the basic tasks auto chips run?

Not even that. From the earlier press releases it seems like the fab is primarily focused on power electronics (EV charge controllers, motor drivers, IGBTs etc.), so most of the stuff will be measured in μm and bigger. By the looks of it - an estranged step-sibling of recently expanded Austrian Infineon fab, which was supposedly built at the same time for the same purpose: GaN, SiC, power stuff.
Not sure about car brains and autonomous taxis, but we are sure gonna get a shitton of new EVs.

 

[mtcn77]

That does remind me of AMD's "Diffused in Germany" line until FX chip era.

First GDDR5, Qimonda, came from Germany, too.

 

[Hyrel]

Any particular reason 65nm is too big for the basic tasks auto chips run?

You underestimate how complex car software has been getting lately, all that AI, camera calculations in real time etc. that they need to do and all the new stuff they're adding, takes some serious juice out of those chips.

 

[The red spirit]

First GDDR5, Qimonda, came from Germany, too.

And Germany has one electronics giant, Siemens. Wouldn't be surprising that they also got into game as they already own some chip fabs for random things.

 

[mtcn77]

You underestimate how complex car software has been getting lately, all that AI, camera calculations in real time etc. that they need to do and all the new stuff they're adding, takes some serious juice out of those chips.

Yet some would say, Nazis had coanda drives a.k.a the first ufos.

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

Any particular reason 65nm is too big for the basic tasks auto chips run?

Modern car infotainment systems, saftey control systems, ece all require more processing power then ever before. Even basic cars have bluetooth, carplay, backup cameras, ece.

Now on top of this car brains dont have giant heatsinks and 120mm fans. They are typically ultrabook power level with passive cooling. Sub 10 watt 65nm CPUs are not powerful enough to handle the workload of modern cars.

 

[erocker]

Nice! Now to get DFI back!

 

[R-T-B]

Modern car infotainment systems, saftey control systems, ece all require more processing power then ever before

I'm still not convinced it's very much at all unless you are talking self driving vehicles. There were 65nm arm chips with infotainment style features (decode/encode etc). They were mostly used in yesteryear cellphones.

 

[Tardian]

65nm on 300mm wafer in Dresden ... AMD did that in 2005 at Fab36. Is automotive technology that far behind?

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

I'm still not convinced it's very much at all unless you are talking self driving vehicles. There were 65nm arm chips with infotainment style features (decode/encode etc). They were mostly used in yesteryear cellphones.

yesteryear cellphones are as comparable to modern infotainment systems as a model T is to a modern economy car. Resolution alone is on a completely different field to old cell phones, Bluetooth streaming takes substantial CPU time for 65nm era tech, and modern safety tech is constantly polling sensors and running calculations to determine if it should pop up a warning or intervene. That infotainment system is also running your dual zone HVAC and its assorted sensors, rendering your digital gauge cluster, ece. Hell some cars use that CPU to do all your ECU load as well.

Thats an awful lot to manage with a 65nm ARM chip from 12 years ago.

 

[TheoneandonlyMrK]

You underestimate how complex car software has been getting lately, all that AI, camera calculations in real time etc. that they need to do and all the new stuff they're adding, takes some serious juice out of those chips.

And your forgetting that asides from main processing elements, there are a lot of chips these days in Every part of the car, door locks, pumps , wings, a lot are modular with ID chips and support hardware to run feature's.
And few board's have one piece of silicon on shit look in your Pc, how many chip's are the Main CPU in there.
Not that your wrong about AI, maybe it's scale of use but that shits marginal still ,anyway, power delivery and control hardware alone accounts for plenty of dies.

Try fixing some cars the amount of parts now With chips in there for some thing or other is beyond belief, I get oily often.


Your 7nm AI audio center talks through canbus the same as your door lock, key, window motors, I could go on, via protocols.

The heavy lifting is spread out, and the diagnostic and control systems, on canbus, are expensive.

Your hyperfocusing on use cases othe foundries will supply for, this will still, lighten the load but not a smidge of difference will come of it on the GPU shelves.

 

[R-T-B]

yesteryear cellphones are as comparable to modern infotainment systems as a model T is to a modern economy car.

No, they are pretty much identical from am encode/decode perspective. Other than AV1 the formats have not changed much. The most that changed is the bluetooth standard.

Again, not convinced.

Thats an awful lot to manage with a 65nm ARM chip from 12 years ago.

We aren't talking 12 years ago. There are 65nm arm chips still being made now, today.

You underestimate how complex car software has been getting lately, all that AI, camera calculations in real time etc. that they need to do and all the new stuff they're adding, takes some serious juice out of those chips.

I specifically excluded self driving car functions. I'm talking for a baseline automobile.

No it won't be a dream car. It will work however.

Resolution alone

is generally 720p on most car displays I have seen? We aren't talking luxury cars.

The LG G3 was 65nm and ran a 1440p display for comparison sake.