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iST joins the Automotive Electronics Council as an associate member

November 14, 2022

Posted by: Shriya Raban

Integrated Service Technology Inc has announced that after going through tedious multiple reviews, the Automotive Electronics Council (AEC) the highest level of global automotive electronics qualification association has recently officially recognised iST as one of its associate member. There are 93 firms in the world, 9 firms from Taiwan, to have become an AEC member. These 9 Taiwan firms include TSMC and UMC foundries, and iST is honored to be the only laboratory in Asia recognised as part of this international elite team.

The Automotive Electronics Council (AEC) is an organisation established by Chrysler, Ford Motor and General Motors in 1990 for the purpose of establishing and standardising parts’ reliability test methodologies and quality system standards in the automotive industry. If any relevant manufacturer wants to join the automotive electronics supply chain, they must first obtain the “entry permit” through the execution of automotive qualification specifications set by the AEC, such as AEC-Q100 (Failure Mechanism Based Stress Test Qualification for Integrated Circuits), AEC-Q101 (for Discrete Semiconductors), AEC- Q102 (for Optoelectronic Semiconductors), AEC-Q104 (for MCM Multichip Modules), AEC-Q200 (for Passive Components) and other AEC-Q norms.

There are only 93 qualified AEC members in the world and are all distinguished firms in their respective automobile fields. They include the world’s Top 10 Tier 1 suppliers like APTIV, BOSCH, CONTINENTAL, DENSO, MAGNA, ZF; Top 10 automotive chip Tier 2 suppliers like INFINEON, INTEL, NVIDIA, NXP, QUALCOMM, STM, TI; Tier 3 suppliers (i.e. service providers to Tier 2) such as TSMC, UMC, GF, AMKOR. As a 3rd party impartial laboratory certified with ISO-17025 (Laboratory Quality System), iST is honored on receiving the Membership Acceptance Letter from AEC to become its only associate member that comes well-equipped with comprehensive verification analysis laboratories to service the mission goal of the AEC’s Component Technical Committee.

iST is the pioneer of automotive electronics verification. It started deploying its layout in the field of automotive electronic verification as early as 2008. For instance, it established a joint venture company known as DEKRA-iST in 2015 with the world’s largest automotive safety identification and testing partner, DEKRA. In 2020, it joined the MIH (Mobility In Harmony) Open EV Alliance and over a decade, has successfully helped up to 70% of semiconductor manufacturers to step into the automotive electronics market. Now, in 2022, after laying the foundation in the automotive electronics market over the years, iST has finally passed the stringent reviews by the AEC and proud to become a member.

According to iST’s vice president of reliability engineering division, Allan Tseng, with the increasing complexity of computing power and functions of chips, the verification and testing time of automotive chips electronics will only be increasing. Moreover, since the verification time cannot be compressed, we can only resort to the optimisation of the overall IC design processes. For example, the life cycle of automotive chips electronics is usually 5 to 10 years, so suppliers will discuss with a laboratory on the plan to conduct On-going Reliability Test (ORT) after the verification of a product is completed. The duration of the plan is as long as 3 to 5 years with confirmation of each test at various stages to ensure the efficiency of chip’s design and manufacture.

Among the AEC members at present, there are just a few Taiwanese fabless IC design houses. It is speculated that the main reason for this is that most IC design companies in Taiwan started off with consumer products, and it is not until recent years that they have gradually moved toward the field of automotive electronics.

With the emergence of electric vehicles (EVs) and self-driving vehicles, it is expected that the annual compound growth rate of semiconductors for automotive electronics will reach as high as 16.5% by 2026, while the output of electronic components will rise by 50% by 2030. The demands include audiovisual systems, environmental perception, in-vehicle networking, and power control, which will lead to a substantial increase in the quantity of sensing components, power semiconductors, and AI computing chips. In the long run, this trend will be a great opportunity for Taiwanese fabless IC design houses to step into the field of automotive electronics.

Allan Tseng further pointed out that with iST having become an AEC member, its role has shifted from “a member bound by the specification standards into a member involved in formulating the specification standards”. It will be able to more rapidly grasp the market trend of automotive electronics, effectively gain insights into the experimental approaches of international automotive companies and Tier 1 manufacturers, as well as providing knowledge about the trend of international quality control; it will also lead in the analysis of international specification standards, thereby becoming the navigator for IC design and semiconductor companies to step into automotive electronics.’

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