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> Reuss told an investor conference GM is working with seven chip suppliers on three new families of microcontrollers that will reduce the number of unique chip

> Reuss told an investor conference GM is working with seven chip suppliers on three new families of microcontrollers that will reduce the number of unique chips by 95% on future vehicles. For those of us without a background in computer engineering, are microcontrollers easier or less costly to manufacture in the absence of chips? Any reason they didn’t do this before and are doing it only now, as a response to the chip shortage?

redis_mlc 5y ago
Recent microcontrollers have CPU plus other logic, RAM and interfaces integrated into one die. This is more reliable overall, consumes less power, and is much cheaper to build systems around. It's a one-chip solution instead of several chips, which is where the "95% less unique chips" comes from. Western companies got fat and lazy, so kept using off-the-shelf chipsets and more discrete logic, usually from overseas. As an American, I'm ashamed of this, and you should be too. At the moment, the US probably couldn't build their own tanks or fighter jets.
topspin 5y ago
> Any reason they didn’t do this before and are doing it only now, as a response to the chip shortage? The same reason that many things aren't done; there was no pressure to do so. The pallet of MCUs available to designers was truly vast; every MCU manufacturer was happy to negotiate supply of any of a wide variety of their wares for deep pocketed manufacturers like GM. So engineers optimized their designs around that affordance. Now that affordance is gone and pressure is on to rethink designs around the new reality. That car manufacturers never appeared to have considered whether they might take responsibility for the supply of components they use at a quantity of 50-100 per vehicle is pretty astonishing. Toyota apparently had stockpiled some quantity of devices and that paid off until the stockpile ran out. This appears to be the sum total of the entire industries' contingency planning.
imtringued 5y ago
Because "economics" says don't waste resources on a potential chip shortage. It's like skipping out on health insurance.
captainredbeard 5y ago
Microcontrollers are chips. They are consolidating to require less chip manufacturing.

redis_mlc 5y ago

Recent microcontrollers have CPU plus other logic, RAM and interfaces integrated into one die. This is more reliable overall, consumes less power, and is much cheaper to build systems around. It's a one-chip solution instead of several chips, which is where the "95% less unique chips" comes from. Western companies got fat and lazy, so kept using off-the-shelf chipsets and more discrete logic, usually from overseas. As an American, I'm ashamed of this, and you should be too. At the moment, the US probably couldn't build their own tanks or fighter jets.

topspin 5y ago

> Any reason they didn’t do this before and are doing it only now, as a response to the chip shortage? The same reason that many things aren't done; there was no pressure to do so. The pallet of MCUs available to designers was truly vast; every MCU manufacturer was happy to negotiate supply of any of a wide variety of their wares for deep pocketed manufacturers like GM. So engineers optimized their designs around that affordance. Now that affordance is gone and pressure is on to rethink designs around the new reality. That car manufacturers never appeared to have considered whether they might take responsibility for the supply of components they use at a quantity of 50-100 per vehicle is pretty astonishing. Toyota apparently had stockpiled some quantity of devices and that paid off until the stockpile ran out. This appears to be the sum total of the entire industries' contingency planning.

imtringued 5y ago

Because "economics" says don't waste resources on a potential chip shortage. It's like skipping out on health insurance.

captainredbeard 5y ago

Microcontrollers are chips. They are consolidating to require less chip manufacturing.