Asian Tech Press (Dec 09) -- German automaker BMW Group announced that it had signed chip supply agreements with Munich-based microchip manufacturer INOVA Semiconductor and U.S. chipmaker GlobalFoundries.

Under the agreement, INOVA and GlobalFoundries guarantee to supply millions of chips to BMW each year. BMW said in a statement that the chips will first be deployed in the BMW iX model and then in other models.

Previously, global parts shortages had led to production shutdowns at some BMW plants. For example, in July this year, the company's three plants in Germany and its other plants in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Austria had temporarily shut down production or cut shifts.

BMW said the agreement is part of a broader move by the company to secure supplies of strategically essential parts.

In addition, the agreement shows the automaker is shunning traditional parts makers in favor of dealing directly with semiconductor makers to secure critical chip supplies.

In addition to the chip supply agreements with INOVA and GlobalFoundries, BMW also signed an agreement with Qualcomm in November. Under the agreement, BMW will use Qualcomm chips in its next-generation driver assistance and autonomous driving systems.

It is reported that BMW will use Qualcomm's specially tailored computer vision processing chips to analyze data from front, rear and surround-view cameras, and will also use Qualcomm's central computing chip and another set of Qualcomm chips to enable data exchange between the car and cloud computing centers.