A Close Look at the 2025 Shanghai Auto Show: Chip Producers Unveil Their "Secret Weapons," Targeting Optimization of Vehicle Costs with Automotive Chips

The 2025 Shanghai Auto Show is in full swing, featuring over 1,000 vehicles on display, including more than 100 new car models making their debut.

On this stage of cutting-edge innovation, in addition to the presence of numerous automakers, automotive chips have undoubtedly become a major focus of this year's auto show.

At the 2025 Shanghai Auto Show, both domestic top-tier enterprises focused on automotive-grade intelligent vehicle computing chips, such as Black Sesame Technologies and Horizon Robotics, as well as international chip giants like Intel and Qualcomm, have unveiled new products and showcased their "magic weapons."

▍Computing Power Growth and High Integration Become Industry Trends

As intelligent driving assistance levels advance from L2 to L4 and the demand for smart cockpit interaction further increases, the computing power requirements for automotive chips are growing exponentially. A reporter from the Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily noted during visits to multiple chip producers' booths at this year's Shanghai Auto Show that the growth in computing power and further integration of automotive chips are significant trends.

Intel unveiled its latest product, the second-generation AI-enhanced Software-Defined Vehicle (SDV) SoC, targeting the SDV field at this year's Shanghai Auto Show. According to reports, in terms of architectural design, this SoC adopts Intel's Chiplet technology, vertically stacking functional modules such as CPU, GPU, and NPU, enabling the integration of different computing, graphics, and AI functional modules based on the specific needs of car makers.

Jack Weast, Vice President of Intel and General Manager of the Automotive Division, stated on-site that compared to the previous generation, this SoC can improve generative and multimodal AI performance by up to 10 times, graphics performance by up to 3 times, and features 12 camera channels and 280 audio channels. This SoC is expected to begin deployment in mass-produced car models by 2026.

Additionally, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8775 platform showcased at this Shanghai Auto Show also features high integration, adopting a heterogeneous computing architecture of CPU+NPU+GPU, supporting 4K multi-screen interaction, high-speed NOA navigation, and real-time control of the auto body domain with a system bandwidth of 154GB/s.

Turning to domestic intelligent driving chips, Black Sesame Technologies launched a new-generation chip platform and highlighted the Huashan® A2000 family of chips. Compared to the aforementioned products, the A2000 family offers higher integration, featuring multifunctional units such as CPU, DSP, GPU, NPU, MCU, ISP, and CV, manufactured using a 7nm process.

On-site staff told the Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily reporter that the Huashan® A2000 family single-chip computing power can reach up to 250+ TOPS, designed as a high-computing power chip platform for next-generation AI models, primarily targeting various levels of autonomous driving needs.

Moreover, Black Sesame Technologies unveiled the "Safe Intelligent Base" solution at the Shanghai Auto Show, centered around the Wudang C1200 family of cross-domain fusion chips, aiming to address the safety and cost challenges automakers face in cross-domain integration through hardware-level security isolation, platform-based computing power expansion, and full life cycle compatibility design.

Black Sesame Technologies stated that the Safe Intelligent Base has already gained recognition from several international top-tier enterprises and entered the mass production phase. Dongfeng plans to mass-produce using Black Sesame Technologies' Wudang series chips by 2025.

Horizon Robotics also focused on autonomous driving at this Shanghai Auto Show, showcasing its recently released Urban Assisted Driving System HSD and the Journey® 6-series automotive intelligent computing solutions. It is reported that the Journey 6P chip offers a computing power of 560 TOPS, adopting an end-to-end technical architecture capable of processing 20 camera data streams simultaneously, meeting real-time decision-making needs in complex urban scenarios.

Notably, Unisoc launched a new-generation flagship intelligent cockpit chip platform, A8880, at the 2025 Shanghai Auto Show, with significant improvements in computing power and integration. According to on-site staff, the platform's CPU performance has increased by 3 times, GPU performance by 6 times, NPU performance by 8 times, and audio DSP performance by 8 times YoY.

A chip producer executive interviewed by the Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily at this Shanghai Auto Show stated that automakers are demanding higher performance from autonomous driving computing chips, requiring them to handle multiple tasks such as autonomous driving, smart cockpits, and vehicle-road coordination simultaneously. The improvement in chip integration is reflected in two aspects: hardware architecture integration and process technology breakthroughs. "The new generation of chips generally adopts a heterogeneous architecture of CPU+GPU+NPU+DSP, evolving from functional domains to central computing."

Industry data shows that the "China Intelligent Driving Commercialization Development White Paper" indicates that China's intelligent connected vehicle industry reached a scale of 1,108.2 billion yuan in 2024, with a growth rate of 34%, and is expected to exceed 5 trillion yuan by 2030.

Industry insiders noted that automotive chips play a crucial supporting role in the development of intelligent vehicles. Automakers are increasingly demanding higher computing power and functional integration from chips to achieve more advanced autonomous driving and richer cockpit interaction features.

▍Automotive Chips Aim to Optimize Vehicle Costs

"The enhanced competitiveness of China's automotive industry is driving the development of intelligent driving assistance systems and automotive chips, with the rapid development of domestic automakers imposing higher demands on the competitiveness and innovation speed of the automotive chip industry. In the next 3 to 5 years, whether the manufacturing and packaging of chips are fully autonomous and controllable is worth more attention. " said Wang Qiang, Senior Director of the Intelligent Connected Vehicle Development Institute at FAW R&D Center, at the 8th International Automotive Key Technology Forum held concurrently with the 2025 Shanghai Auto Show.

Chen Shujie, Vice President of SemiDrive, believes that the advantage of domestic chips lies in their proximity to the market and rapid iteration, enabling them to quickly respond to market demands and achieve product co-creation.

The Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily reporter noted that China's automotive chip industry is quick to launch products. The products showcased by automotive chip producers at the 2025 Shanghai Auto Show demonstrate significant improvements in product parameters and compatibility with audio, screens, cameras, etc.

In this regard, Chen Shujie, Vice President of SemiDrive, stated that by directly communicating with automakers, understanding customer needs, and engaging in product definition and joint development, they focus not only on technical parameters but also on practical application value and cost optimization.

Notably, under the wave of "intelligent driving equality," automakers are striving to popularize high-level intelligent driving functions in more low and mid-end car models. To achieve this goal, reducing hardware costs has become crucial, leading to a downward trend in the prices of automotive chips and car radars in recent years.

Liu Yingwei, Senior Director of Intel China's Automotive Division, believes that the biggest cost pressure for downstream automakers lies in the entire vehicle. The focus should be on reducing costs while increasing the driving range of NEVs, rather than simply lowering chip prices.

In fact, most chip producers participating in the 2025 Shanghai Auto Show have recognized this, viewing helping downstream automakers optimize vehicle costs as an important function of their products.

Among them, Intel's newly launched second-generation AI-enhanced SDV SoC reduces costs through dynamic voltage and frequency scaling (DVFS) and intelligent task scheduling algorithms, minimizing the need for external bridging chips; Black Sesame Technologies' A2000 series offers Lite/Standard/Pro gradient options; Horizon Robotics' spatiotemporal joint optimization algorithm dynamically schedules computing resources, reducing energy consumption per 100 kilometers to 0.15 kWh, 42% more energy-efficient than GPU solutions.