In the 2026 semiconductor industry landscape, AI data centers and smart vehicles have indisputably become the dual engines driving industry growth. According to Omdia, the market size for AI data center chips has surged from $123 billion in 2024 to $207 billion in 2025; WSTS forecasts that the global semiconductor market size will approach $975.5 billion in 2026, a year-over-year growth of 26.3%. Morgan Stanley further projects that by 2030, the global semiconductor market could reach $1.5 trillion, with AI semiconductors accounting for half of it. Automotive semiconductors are also advancing rapidly, with the global market expected to grow from $77.4 billion in 2025 to $133.1 billion in 2030, achieving a CAGR of 11.4%. In the Chinese market, the high-computing-power autonomous driving chip market is projected to reach 85 billion RMB in 2026, while the automotive-grade SoC (System on Chip) market will leap from 38.1 billion RMB in 2024 to an estimated 64.3 billion RMB in 2026.
The explosive growth in these two markets has opened an unprecedented window of opportunity for global chip manufacturers. Against this industrial backdrop, onsemi, during electronica China 2026, systematically showcased its comprehensive strategic layout in the AI data center and smart vehicle sectors to industry media, including EEFOCUS, through two keynote speeches and a media Q&A session. The showcase covered everything from the "grid-to-core" end-to-end power architecture to the Treo platform and zonal control solutions for software-defined vehicles. This global semiconductor giant, which generated approximately $6 billion in annual revenue in 2025 and boasts over 25,000 standard product part numbers, is targeting these two long-term high-growth markets with a system-level innovation approach.
AI Data Centers: Power Is Becoming the Primary Bottleneck for Computing Power Proliferation
Sravan Vanaparthy, Vice President and General Manager of the Power Solutions Group at onsemi, made a judgment in his keynote speech: the bottleneck does not lie in GPUs, memory, or interconnects; power has now become one of the key bottlenecks for AI proliferation. Behind this judgment is the geometric growth in power demand brought about by the explosion of AI computing power.
Sravan Vanaparthy, Vice President and General Manager of the Power Solutions Group at onsemi
Market forecasts indicate that by 2030, AI factories will become the sixth-largest electricity consumer globally. The power demand for global AI data centers is expected to grow from 745 TWh to 1,000 TWh. At this scale, energy efficiency is no longer just a component-level metric, but a critical leverage for enterprises to achieve cost advantages and sustainable development competitiveness. onsemi estimates that for every 1% improvement in system energy efficiency, 10 TWh of electricity can be saved globally each year; in terms of sustainability, 3 to 4 million tons of CO2 emissions can be reduced annually.
From 48V/54V to 800V: Architectural Shift Drives Demand for Wide Bandgap Devices
Data center rack-level power requirements are experiencing a dramatic surge. From 2025 to 2030, rack-level power demand is projected to grow by approximately 10 times. The substantial increase in copper losses is driving the industry to migrate from traditional 48V/54V DC power distribution to 800V high-voltage DC architectures. By 2030, racks with power exceeding 1MW will accelerate the evolution towards 800Vdc power supply, which directly drives the demand for wide bandgap devices—SiC MOSFETs, SiC JFETs, and GaN.
This architectural leap brings entirely new system design challenges. Biljana Beronja, Head of the Silicon Carbide Product Line in the Power Solutions Group at onsemi, pointed out that switching to a higher-voltage DC bus can reduce the current required for operation, thereby lowering conduction losses; more importantly, the high-voltage architecture can reduce the number of power conversion stages, improving end-to-end system energy efficiency. However, the challenges are equally significant: the development and synergy of the ecosystem, incomplete infrastructure and regulatory frameworks, and the upgrading of protection and safety standards under higher voltages are all issues the industry needs to address together.
Biljana Beronja, Head of the Silicon Carbide Product Line in the Power Solutions Group at onsemi
SiC JFET Breakthrough: From Protection Devices to the Core of Power Conversion
In the critical link of the 800V IBC (Intermediate Bus Converter), onsemi provides a differentiated technical path—the SiC cascode JFET. Structurally, it integrates a normally-on SiC JFET with a low-voltage silicon MOSFET, retaining the excellent performance of the JFET while achieving a leading on-resistance per unit area on a smaller die size.
Yusi Liu. SiC JFET Product Line Manager in the Power Solutions Group at onsemi, revealed that solutions based on SiC cascode JFETs can achieve switching frequencies from 800kHz to 1MHz, which offers more implementation advantages than traditional silicon carbide MOSFET solutions. Test results show that this solution can operate at a full power of 6,000 watts. More importantly, compared to GaN solutions, the on-resistance variation of SiC JFETs at high temperatures is more controllable. Coupled with top-side cooling packages, it helps improve thermal management capabilities and reliability design margins in high-power-density scenarios; at the same time, it is compatible with standard silicon gate drivers, making the gate design simpler and more robust than that of GaN.
Yusi Liu, SiC JFET Product Line Manager in the Power Solutions Group at onsemi
According to Yole Group forecasts, by 2031, the HV IBC market size will reach $1.1 billion, of which the 800V-to-48V modules alone will contribute approximately $600 million. onsemi is officially introducing SiC JFETs from traditional protection and hot-swap scenarios into HV IBC main power conversion applications.
From Grid to Core: End-to-End Power Architecture Leadership
What onsemi emphasizes is not just single-device advantages, but the comprehensive power architecture capability "from grid to core." This architecture covers five critical links: the solid-state transformer (SST) and UPS stages from 13.8-35kV AC to the 800VDC site bus; telemetry, protection, and energy storage for the 800VDC site bus; 800V or 54VDC IBCs, hot-swaps, and BBUs for power shelves; PSUs, Vcore VRMs, and point-of-load (POL) for compute shelves; and package-level/embedded voltage regulation.
At each stage, onsemi has corresponding technical deployments: high-voltage SiC and vertical GaN for solid-state transformers and solid-state circuit breakers, IGBT energy storage modules for energy storage systems, and advanced AC-DC and DC-DC control topologies paired with isolated gate drivers and precision current sensing. Sravan Vanaparthy stated that onsemi's advantage lies in its ability to integrate key technologies such as power devices, control, driving, protection, and sensing at the system level, providing AI data centers with end-to-end power solutions from the grid to the core.
Smart Vehicles: Three Major Trends Drive Surge in Electronic Component Demand
In the automotive sector, Henri-Xavier Delecourt, Ethernet Expert and Head of the In-Vehicle Network Product Line in the Analog and Mixed-Signal Division at onsemi, pointed out that three key trends are driving industry development: electrification—continuing to grow globally, with higher requirements for range, more power, and higher energy efficiency; architectural evolution—moving from traditional domain control to zonal control, and ultimately entering the stage of software-defined vehicles; and ADAS and autonomous driving—technology support continuously evolving from L2 to higher levels.
Henri-Xavier Delecourt, Ethernet Expert and Head of the In-Vehicle Network Product Line in the Analog and Mixed-Signal Division at onsemi
These trends result in a continuous increase in the number of electronic components per vehicle. From driver monitoring in the cabin and occupant monitoring required by regulations, to camera monitoring for surround-view systems; from hybrid, pure electric, to plug-in hybrid vehicles; from bidirectional OBCs to traction inverters and high-low voltage DC-DC converters—every field is generating demand for more electronic components. Electronic components are increasingly replacing traditional mechanical parts, and the total value of components per vehicle is rising accordingly.
Zonal Control Architecture: The Industry Inflection Point from "Optional" to "Standard"
In the evolution of automotive E/E architectures, the zonal control architecture is becoming the industry mainstream at an astonishing speed. Data shows that in 2025, the delivery volume of vehicle models with factory-installed standard Zonal Control Units (ZCU) in the Chinese market reached 2.899 million units, a year-over-year growth of 92.79%, with the annual penetration rate breaking through 10%. This milestone indicates that ZCUs are rapidly transforming from an "optional" feature in high-end models to a "standard" configuration in smart vehicles.
The zonal control architecture changes the traditional distributed ECU layout. Unlike domain architectures, the zonal architecture configures zonal control modules based on "physical location," responsible for integrating nearby sensors and actuators, distributing power, processing low-level computations, and transmitting data to the central computing system via Ethernet. Centralized computing requires powerful processing capabilities, replacing the role of domain processing ECUs in a full zonal control architecture.
This transformation poses entirely new requirements for the three major subsystems: communication, power distribution, and sensing. At the communication level, traditional LIN/CAN buses are no longer able to simultaneously meet the demands for bandwidth, real-time performance, and scalability.
Delecourt pointed out that the backbone network has established Ethernet as the core of in-vehicle communication, and the challenge for the next stage is how to push Ethernet to the edge nodes.
10BASE-T1S: Extending Ethernet to Edge Nodes
onsemi's solution is 10BASE-T1S Ethernet technology. Designed specifically for automotive and industrial scenarios, this technology enables nodes to achieve shared communication in a multidrop bus format via a single twisted pair, reducing the deployment of Ethernet switches and eliminating the need for bulky Ethernet/CAN gateways.
onsemi has launched two automotive-grade 10BASE-T1S MAC-PHY transceivers. Among them, the T30HM1TS2500 is built on the new Treo platform (BCD65 process). onsemi is actively promoting the application of Treo platform-based 10BASE-T1S Ethernet solutions in next-generation zonal architectures, providing connectivity from central computing to edge nodes for software-defined vehicles.
Delecourt admitted that the technology itself is not the biggest challenge; the real bottleneck lies in system integration and the shift in mindset. For OEMs that have long adopted CAN and LIN architectures, this transition is not just an upgrade in communication technology, but a crucial step in the evolution of the vehicle's overall E/E architecture. Through the Treo platform and automotive-grade 10BASE-T1S MAC-PHY solutions, onsemi provides customers with a more easily integrable technical path, helping to accelerate the popularization of Ethernet in next-generation software-defined vehicles.
eFuse and SmartFET: Intelligent Upgrade of Power Distribution
At the power distribution level, onsemi has introduced intelligent protection devices such as eFuse and SmartFET. Jan Polfliet, Head of Automotive eFuse Products in the Analog and Mixed-Signal Division at onsemi, explained that the essential difference between eFuse and traditional fuses is that it effectively combines three capabilities: switching, protection, and power management. Traditional fuses must be replaced after blowing, whereas an eFuse can enter a derating or power-limiting mode when an anomaly is detected, enhancing system-level safety through richer diagnostic information.
Jan Polfliet, Head of Automotive eFuse Products in the Analog and Mixed-Signal Division at onsemi
More importantly, the eFuse aligns with the concept of software-defined vehicles. The same hardware platform can be used for different vehicle models, defining fuse parameters via software during the vehicle configuration stage—the same device can be configured to different specifications according to load requirements without replacing the hardware. onsemi has achieved significant results in generational performance improvements: the RDS(on) of the 48V eFuse has been reduced to one-quarter of its original value, and the FOM (Figure of Merit) has decreased by 70%.
Treo Platform: The "Technology Foundation" for Analog and Mixed-Signal
The underlying technology supporting onsemi's automotive zonal control strategy is the Treo analog and mixed-signal platform. Based on 65nm BCD (Bipolar-CMOS-DMOS) process technology, this platform supports a wide voltage range from 1V to 90V and can operate at temperatures up to 175°C.
The Treo platform adopts a modular architecture, featuring continuously evolving and reusable analog, digital, and power IP building blocks. This means that different product lines—from LED drivers, 10BASE-T1S Ethernet controllers, and ultrasonic sensors to gate drivers—can share the same technical foundation, significantly shortening product development and validation cycles.
Delecourt introduced that currently, products such as gate drivers, SmartFETs, automotive LED drivers, ultrasonic sensing, inductive sensing, rain/light sensing, standard products, and 10BASE-T1S Ethernet are all available on the Treo platform.
MCU-Free Smart Lighting: A Typical Case of Cost Restructuring
The integration capabilities brought by the Treo platform are specifically manifested in the automotive lighting field. onsemi has been deeply engaged in advanced automotive LED lighting for over 15 years, being an industry pioneer and market leader. Based on the Treo platform, onsemi has launched an intelligent LED driving solution that requires no local MCU (Microcontroller Unit), driven directly by a Remote Control Protocol (RCP) chip.
Paul Decloedt, Automotive Smart Lighting Expert in the Analog and Mixed-Signal Division at onsemi, pointed out that the cost savings brought by this solution are multi-dimensional: it eliminates the traditional headlamp communication control module and local microcontroller; compared to the CAN architecture, it avoids dual software development and dual-supplier certification; after the software is transferred from the LED module to the central computing platform, it helps reduce redundant software development and certification work, allowing software capabilities to be more concentrated on the central computing platform side for reuse and iteration. This not only shortens the time-to-market but also accelerates subsequent software development and maintenance.
Paul Decloedt, Automotive Smart Lighting Expert in the Analog and Mixed-Signal Division at onsemi
More importantly, the MCU-free solution shifts intelligence from the hardware to the software level. Delecourt pointed out that the intelligence integrated within the chip is application-agnostic; what changes are the intelligent modules or functions in the central computing system. This perfectly aligns with the core logic of software-defined vehicles—decoupling hardware and software development to reduce the complexity of both.
Chinese Market: Unique Challenges of Speed and Scale
In the discussions, multiple onsemi executives repeatedly mentioned the uniqueness of the Chinese market. Delecourt stated bluntly, "Chinese automakers are truly developing at the speed of light; many times, we need to keep up with their pace." This requires onsemi to accelerate the enhancement of its local support capabilities and response speed in China.
Felicity Carson, Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer at onsemi, emphasized that China is a vital core market for onsemi. Local customers have fast iteration speeds, early deployment of new technologies, and high requirements for system-level performance, forming a closed loop of technology iteration that feeds back into onsemi's global R&D. With the strategy of "Excellent Technology, China Speed," onsemi precisely matches the core development needs of China's NEV (New Energy Vehicle), industrial automation, photovoltaic, and AI infrastructure upgrades with a differentiated power and sensing product matrix.
Conclusion
From the 800V SiC JFET solution for AI data centers to the Treo platform and 10BASE-T1S zonal architecture for smart vehicles, the core logic presented by onsemi at electronica China 2026 is clear and consistent: competition is shifting from the performance comparison of single devices to a comprehensive contest of system-level integration capabilities.
In the AI field, power has become the primary bottleneck for computing power proliferation, and the solution lies in end-to-end architecture optimization from the grid to the chip; in the automotive field, the zonal control architecture is moving from "optional" to "standard," with the key being system-level synergy among the three major subsystems of communication, power distribution, and sensing. With the Treo platform as its technological foundation, supported by wide bandgap materials such as SiC and GaN, and technologies like SiC JFETs, onsemi is attempting to build differentiated competitive barriers in these two high-growth markets.
What is certain is that, driven by the dual waves of AI computing power and smart vehicles, the race for system-level innovation has just begun.