indie Semiconductor and GlobalFoundries Announce Strategic Collaboration to Accelerate Automotive Radar Adoption

Estimated reading time: 2 minutes

indie Semiconductor, an automotive solutions innovator, has announced a strategic collaboration with GlobalFoundries (Nasdaq: GFS) (GF) to develop its portfolio of high-performance radar systems-on-chip (SoC). These SoC’s – manufactured on GF’s 22FDX® platform – will target 77 GHz and 120 GHz radar applications for advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and adjacent industrial applications. Automotive radar adoption is being accelerated by global vehicle safety regulation, new car assessment programs, and consumer demand for convenience features. As a result, new vehicles will feature at least four radar sensors, and this is expected to double in next-generation platforms to meet the growing use cases. 

indie’s 77 GHz SoCs are used in systems for both longer-range detection to monitor surroundings and detect obstacles, enabling use cases including forward collision warning (FCW), automatic emergency braking (AEB), and shorter-range applications such as blind spot detection (BSD), cross-traffic alert and automated parking. The 77 GHz radar solution is at the advanced design-in stage with a Tier 1 customer, supporting multiple automotive OEMs.

The 120 GHz solutions will target in-cabin applications requiring higher resolution and precision over shorter ranges, such as occupant monitoring and detection of vital signs such as heartbeat and respiration. indie’s 120 GHz SoC supports antenna-in-package designs, enabling smaller systems to be developed without compromising performance, cost or in-cabin aesthetics. First customer samples of the 120 GHz solution are already available. For both product lines, the key challenges to overcome for Tier 1 integrators and OEMs were to deliver high performance without compromising hardware, software and system integration for the lowest total cost of ownership. indie has solved these challenges, delivering class-leading performance while driving a step change in solution cost and footprint relative to competing solutions, making this key safety technology more affordable and ubiquitous in mass-market vehicles.

The design innovation and functional integration of analog, digital, RF, power management and memory functions in indie’s radar solutions are enabled by GF’s automotive-qualified 22nm fully depleted silicon-on-insulator (SOI) process technology. For automotive ADAS and processing applications that rely on responsive, always-on wireless connectivity, GF’s 22FDX platform offers FinFET-class performance and energy efficiency in a planar technology with state-of-the-art PPA (Power, Performance, Area) and RF performance.

“indie has been working closely with GlobalFoundries for several years, and this strategic collaboration for our high-performance radar portfolio builds on the success of an established relationship,” said Michael Wittmann chief operating officer at indie. “Our goal is to keep our customers at the forefront of technology in the increasingly competitive automotive sector, and the combination of indie’s design innovation and the foundry’s manufacturing leadership will enable safety-critical radar-based ADAS technologies to be deployed cost-effectively across automotive and industrial mobility applications.”

“Our strategic collaboration with indie is bringing exciting and innovative product solutions to the automotive and industrial mobility markets,” said Ed Kaste, senior vice president of GF’s ultra-low power CMOS product line. “As GF continues to invest in capacity and technology differentiation in our 22FDX platform and build on this partnership for indie’s next-generation solutions, customers will mutually benefit from GF’s purpose-built, automotive-grade technologies and indie’s best in class radar design innovation, ultimately delivering the highest-integrated silicon solutions that drive down the total system cost and power consumption for faster and ubiquitous market deployment.”