Geely to produce China's first 7nm auto chip in Q3

China's Geely Holding Group is scheduled to produce the country's first automotive grade seven-nanometer system-on-chip in the third quarter this year.

The chip, called SE1000, is designed by Siengine, a Hubei province-based joint venture established by chipmaker Arm and EcarX, which is owned by Geely Holding Group.

Gan Jiayue, CEO of Geely Holding Group's carmaking subsidiary Geely Auto, made the announcement in a statement on Monday that outlines the carmaker's goals in 2022 and beyond.

Gan said the chip, which is to offer smart onboard features, will be first installed in one of Geely's most popular models but did not gave its name.

Besides chips for smart cabin functions, he said the company has plans to produce autonomous driving chips and on-board central processing units in the future.

At a press conference last year, Gan said the group will roll out two five-nanometer high-performance chips from 2024 to 2025.

One of them, with a computing capability of 256 tera operations per second, will be used for Geely's autonomous vehicles.

"Geely is to commercialize Level 4 autonomous driving by 2025 and have the complete know-how of Level 5 autonomous driving," Gan said.

The Society of Automotive Engineers International defines six levels of automation from Level 0 to Level 5.

It said Level 4 means the vehicle can operate itself in most of circumstances while L5, also known as full driving automation, requires no human participation at all.

Geely Auto is China's largest private carmaker. Last year, it delivered 1.33 million vehicles as the third popular carmaker in the country, following FAW-Volkswagen and SAIC GM.

lifusheng@chinadaily.com.cn