Guest contribution by Jim Ringold
The processor chips that the big, old automakers use in their vehicles are older than the cell phone. They designed their boards for these old chips and have been using them for decades. You did the job well enough. Now, however, the automotive industry wants more of those old, obsolete chips. The chip fab shops, chip manufacturers, are not interested in investing in the production of obsolete chips. That would be a bad short-term investment for them.
The automotive industry has to design new circuit boards for newer chips and replace the antiques. They defend themselves against the investment and they lack the “internal” know-how.
The average vehicle has a dozen or more simple processors, all programmed to communicate with each other – like in the 1980s when they first went to chips from relays.
The new path is like Tesla does – a single processor that can do everything. A single processor takes care of everything, from transmitting the “click” for the turn signal to the loudspeakers and activating the ABS brakes. Everything electrical can be revised with central computer programming. (Okay, I lied, the screens each have an Intel ATOM processor!)
The reason Tesla can continue to produce cars during the chip shortage Because it can replace a scarce chip with another and simply reprogram the central computer to the new chip properties.
The old fossil car companies cannot make this transition without a great deal of commitment. Apart from the lack of finances and know-how, it would take years and each vehicle model would be transferred individually to the central processor system. Starting car design from a modern, clean CAD drawing has tremendous benefits.
Incidentally, some manufacturers proudly announce that they “now have over-the-air updates” – but NOT for all computer chips in the vehicle, only a few.
Those manufacturers who cannot or do not want to switch will fall behind or fail because the design of the “central processor” is cheaper to build and modify and can even provide completely self-driving software.
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