Infineon and UMC expand automotive partnership
Infineon has announced a long-term strategic cooperation agreement with semiconductor foundry United Microelectronics Corporation (UMC) to multiply production capacity for Infineon automotive microcontrollers. The move is intended to serve the fast-growing automotive market.
UMC will manufacture microcontrollers for Infineon at its Singapore fab using Infineon’s proprietary eNVM (Embedded Non-Volatile Memories) technology. As usual for many automotive applications, these components are manufactured in 40 nm technology. However, there are plans to switch to 28nm geometries, an Infineon spokesperson explained.
Microcontrollers control a multitude of functions in vehicles. The demand for such components is constantly increasing, as the requirements placed on vehicles in terms of data processing capabilities, safety and environmental friendliness are growing. Used to store application code and data for particular fast access, the eNVM memory circuitry is integrated in the MCU die. For the current year, Infineon plans to sell almost one million such microcontrollers for vehicles – per day.
“With this strategic cooperation agreement, we are securing additional long-term capacity to serve our Infineon customers in the fast-growing automotive market,” said Rutger Wijburg, Chief Operating Officer of Infineon. “At the heart of this partnership is a highly reliable embedded memory solution that is suitable for the next generation of automotive applications while meeting the stringent safety requirements for vehicle systems.” According to Wijburg, Infineon and UMC intend to further deepen their collaboration in the areas of microcontrollers, power management and connectivity in the future.
Since 2019, UMC’s output of automotive products has tripled. Jason Wang, co-president of UMC, expects this momentum to continue amid rising demand from the automotive industry for semiconductor products.
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