Guibu Microelectronics (Nanjing)

About Guibu Microelectronics (Nanjing)

Guibu Microelectronics (圭步微电子, brand ARCO) is a Nanjing-based fabless semiconductor company developing 4D imaging millimetre-wave radar chips for intelligent driving. Its stated goal is to become a leading Chinese automotive millimetre-wave chip company, and it designs patented 77 GHz radar system-on-chips that bring the RF transceiver, baseband processing and antenna design together in a single-chip solution. It is headquartered in the Jiangbei New Area of Nanjing, with an operations centre in Shanghai and teams in Singapore, Beijing and other cities.

The product range starts with high-channel-count single-chip radar heads for long- and mid-range main radars, where an 8-transmit, 8-receive CMOS chip (the ARCO7088) delivers 4D imaging point clouds and also supports a satellite radar-head architecture, in which the radar sends pre-processed point-cloud and track data to a central driving domain controller. The chip supports cascading to higher channel counts and supports packaging with waveguide antennas that let radar makers reuse one board design across different fields of view. Alongside it sit a cost-effective, highly integrated corner-radar SoC for corner, blind-spot and lane-change functions, a 92 GHz traffic radar chip and a 60 GHz chip for drone obstacle avoidance.

Guibu sells its chips, together with supporting technical services such as hardware debugging and algorithm optimisation, to automotive Tier 1 suppliers, radar module makers and automakers. A Chinese radar maker has launched a 4D satellite-architecture forward radar built around its 8T8R chip, which shows the chips moving from sampling into customer products. The company's team draws on experience at established chip companies and Chinese and international universities.

Its business model is fabless: it designs the silicon and the radar algorithms, has the chips manufactured by foundries, and sells them to the radar supply chain. It competes in the domestic millimetre-wave radar chip market for advanced driver assistance and autonomous driving, against imported radar chipsets and local challengers, on channel count, cost, size and domestic supply security.