Easy car original recent brand of models of the "core change door" can be described as causing an uproar in the industry, said good Chinese do not cheat Chinese, but this time a brand can really overturn the ship in the gutter, the cause of the incident is that a discerning consumer found that a certain car he purchased was not in accordance with the promotion of Qualcomm's eight-core processor but was replaced by an Intel quad-core processor, octa-core and four-core can be the same, the fluency of the car, the intelligence of the cockpit will certainly be greatly reduced, We can imagine that we spent the money to buy an eight-cylinder car after the car was opened to see that it was a four-cylinder, that heart can be a taste, the cylinder is good to say, coaxing foot throttle is clear and not good to cheat, but this small chip hidden in the car system is really easy to be "Tanuki for prince" Ah, if it is not the consumer has the heart to investigate or the fluency of the car machine is really crotch, many people may still be in the dark.
In fact, the reason why we ignore the car chip is because our inherent thinking about the car has not changed, most oil car consumers are more concerned about the power performance, space size, riding comfort, etc., tram users may pay more attention to the mileage and charging time, users who are interested in intelligent driving may look at what driving assistance functions the vehicle is equipped with, whether it can automatically park a car. Most people do not realize that in fact, the car machine system is the same as we buy mobile phones and computers and other electronic devices, the quality of the chip will directly affect your experience.
Most of us have heard that the iPhone 13 series mobile phone is equipped with A15 chip, the Mac is equipped with M1 chip, the Android field like Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 mobile platform, Huawei's Kirin 9000 are also star products. Because mobile phones and computers occupy more time every day, people are naturally more willing to study its performance parameters, but the performance of the car machine is ignored by us.
As the third space of people's lives in the future, I think it is necessary to popularize the knowledge of the on-board chip to consumers, not to be too advanced, but at least let you have more strings in your heart, know how much a small chip can play in this era of increasingly intelligent vehicles.
"8155" is actually Qualcomm's 3rd generation Snapdragon auto digital cockpit platform internal codename for SA8155P abbreviation, as early as 2019 Qualcomm released this generation of products, Qualcomm launched the 3rd generation Of Snapdragon automotive digital cockpit platform is divided into performance level, flagship level and supreme level three levels of different hardware platforms, "8155" should be located in the middle of the first gear that is the flagship product, Qualcomm's purpose is to use differentiated solutions at all levels for customers and Tier 1 Vendor brings a different user experience.
First of all, we need to know that the smart cockpit needs a "brain" to be responsible for thinking if it wants to be smart. The central domain controller acts as the role of the brain, the core of the domain controller is the chip, the main chip of the smart cockpit is generally called SoC – System on Chip is a system on chip, it includes a CPU, GPU, AI engine, but also includes isPs that process a variety of cameras, support multi-display DPU, integrated audio processing and so on. In addition, the 3rd generation of digital cockpit system, equipped with personalized computer vision and machine learning computer application platform, including AI accelerators and so on. At the same time, Qualcomm also integrates advanced Wi-Fi and Bluetooth technologies on the SoC, which can support the hottest Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.1 technologies at present.
It is worth mentioning that Qualcomm on the SoC platform, correspondingly on the hardware platform to provide Qualcomm software development platform and kits, such an advantage is that customers can be customized and developed according to the needs of their end users, unlike some manufacturers to package this system into a "black box", the later stage of customer secondary development is very unfriendly.
The vehicle-grade SoC is very similar to the SoC of mobile phones, tablets and other terminals in terms of computing power requirements, and the "8155" adopts the same 7nm process as the mobile phone. With its influence in the consumer electronics industry and the large computing power brought by advanced processes, Qualcomm has formed a dimensionality reduction attack on traditional automotive manufacturers such as Renesas, NXP, and Texas Instruments. We compared the Qualcomm 8155 chip with the chips of traditional manufacturers in a table, so that the gap can be clearly seen:
After comparing the data of "8155" and other manufacturers' products, we can look at Qualcomm's own product evolution history, in the "8155" of the previous generation is also a strong product force of the "820A", such as the ideal ONE, Lynk & Co 05, Xiaopeng P7, Extreme Kr 001, Audi A4L and so on are installed with "820A".
Mention snapdragon 820A, friends familiar with smart phones may think of Snapdragon 820, just one more "A", in fact, Qualcomm will be the consumer electronics field of chips through improvement and derivation to make it meet the requirements of the car regulations, Snapdragon 820A as Qualcomm's 2nd generation of automotive digital cockpit platform, using the same 14nm process as the Snapdragon 820 on the phone, Kryo CPU architecture, and Adreno 530 GPU solution. Some small partners may question, it is not difficult for a chip to carry a small mobile phone, can it bring up such a large car? In fact, although the 820 is relatively obsolete in the field of mobile phones, this chip is still very capable of playing on the car side. Otherwise, in today's smart car era, there will not be so many car companies still using the "820A" chip on the car.
The 2nd generation said that we returned to the 3rd generation of digital cockpit platform, just now we mentioned the flagship level SA8155P, in fact, there are performance level SA6155P and supreme level SA8195P chips, why in a generation of products to be divided into three different performance chips? In fact, the three levels have their own corresponding hardware platforms, but Qualcomm provides a unified software framework, what are the benefits of a unified software framework? The customer can use a unified framework to develop his software and hardware, which can be configured for different grades of models according to the needs of the end customer and the car manufacturer, and coordinate different user experiences.
What user experience can be satisfied? From single-screen to multi-screen, high-quality visual experiences, immersive audio, intelligent navigation, situational security, AI experiences, and more meet the expectations of automakers and end users at every level.
Although the 3rd generation digital cockpit platform has outstanding performance and is enough to cope with today's automobile market, Qualcomm has not stopped the evolution of its own products, the 4th generation digital cockpit platform was actually launched at the beginning of this year, and it is planned to achieve mass production in 2022, but here we first sell a close, do not talk about the 4th generation, we leave it to the end to talk slowly.
It is undeniable that Qualcomm has an absolute leading edge in the field of intelligent cockpits, and has also cooperated with more than 20 automakers around the world in information, audio-visual and digital cockpit projects. We have made a comprehensive summary of the models that are currently equipped with the 2nd and 3rd generation chips, and you can see if there is a vehicle of your choice?
Summary of models equipped with Snapdragon's 2nd generation digital cockpit platform:
Summary of models equipped with Snapdragon's 3rd generation digital cockpit platform:
It is worth noting that the WEILAI ET5 just released on NIO Day will also be equipped with the same hardware configuration as the "Big Brother" ET7, and the "8155" chip will help ET5 build its intelligent digital cockpit, and we will continue to pay attention to it in the future. In addition, the third generation of the table above only counts the SA8155P, which is the flagship chip model, and the BYD D1 and Jietu X70 PLUS are equipped with performance-level chips, that is, sa6155P.
The Cadillac LYRIQ, which was officially unveiled at the Guangzhou Auto Show recently, will be equipped with the SA8195P chip, a supreme product.
Mention of the smart cockpit may be different in every heart of the needs, some people may pursue high-resolution multi-screen display, so that the entire car is full of technology, like a private theater in the car; some people may pay attention to human-computer interaction, hoping to reduce the proportion of physical buttons and touch screen control, improve effective communication with the car, so that the car understands my mind better; some people hope to have enough safety in the car prompt function, For example, a driver monitoring system like DMS can promptly remind or alarm the driver in case of distraction and fatigue to ensure the safety of the people in the car. In short, no matter what kind of efficient, cool and safe functions are inseparable from the blessing of powerful performance chips.
Recently, the author participated in the test drive activity of the Great Wall WEY Mocha to experience their latest NOH high-speed intelligent pilot assisted driving system. Coincidentally, the chip in the "little magic box" of Mocha's domain controller is Qualcomm's "8155", so I am going to take Mocha as an example to talk about the specific performance of Qualcomm's third-generation digital cockpit after loading.
First of all, the interior of mocha adopts a newly designed smart cockpit, including four-screen linkage, which concentrates all functions in four screens, feeling technological and futuristic. Includes a 9.2-inch LCD meter, a 9-inch air-conditioned touch panel, a 75-inch AR-HUD, and a 14.6-inch large-size LCD screen.
This LCD screen integrates the Internet of Vehicles, voice interaction system, steering wheel assist mode, interior mood light color/linkage, head-up display, wireless charging, seat, driving locking, light delay time, driving mode and intelligent driver assistance system, intelligent parking, AI laboratory and other popular configurations.
In the process of our experience, the fluency of the screen is still very good, there is no Caton situation, in addition to speech recognition, the car is also doing a good job, supporting the wake-up word wake-up, we issued a "Xiao Wei classmate, navigate to The Wild Goose West Lake" instructions, the car machine quickly responded and gave the recommended route, we can interrupt the car machine talk, directly say the first route, the car machine immediately stops the conversation and jumps directly to navigate, which is still more humane. Interested partners can click on the back link to watch the entire experience: https://vc.yiche.com/vplay/3507849.html
Secondly, the air conditioning touch screen below the central control can be used for air conditioning settings, seat heating, air purification and a variety of aromatherapy settings. In addition, the mocha is equipped with a DMS driver monitoring system, which can perform fatigue monitoring, distraction monitoring, and emotion recognition.
Finally, the assisted driving function NOH is mentioned, that is, on the basis of the previous version of HWA, the high-speed driving assistance system, the blessing of the high-precision map has been added, and the vehicle can realize the intelligent pilot assisted driving from point A to point B in the coverage area of the high-precision map based on the navigation route set by the user. Vehicles can automatically get on and off the ramp according to the prescribed lines, take the initiative to surpass slow cars, intelligently avoid large trucks and other very practical functions, so that long-distance driving becomes safe and comfortable.
Through this test drive, I really feel that the upgrade of the driving experience brought to us by the smart cockpit stems from the empowerment of high-performance car and machine chips, making our future travel more efficient, safe and enjoyable.
Earlier we around the 3rd generation of digital cockpit in the "8155" chip to carry out more discussion, to know that although this chip is very hot but only in the qualcomm product line in the midstream level, 7nm although in the car system has been dominant, but the continuous pursuit of technological progress Qualcomm did not stop, 5nm of the 4th generation Snapdragon auto digital cockpit platform will also achieve mass production next year.
Featuring a 6th Gen Qualcomm Kryo CPU, Qualcomm Hexagon processor, multi-core Qualcomm AI engine, Gen 6 Qualcomm Adreno GPU, and Qualcomm Spectra ISP, the 4th Gen platform enhances graphics, multimedia, computer vision, and AI capabilities to support context-aware, optimized and adaptive cockpit systems that can evolve according to riders' preferences. The Gen 4 platform, with its Soft SKU capabilities supported by The High-Speed Train for cloud platforms, will enable end consumers to continuously acquire the latest features and performance after hardware deployment and throughout the automotive lifecycle through OTA upgrades, as well as visibility into the overall situation of their vehicles and services.
Qualcomm 2-4 generation Snapdragon digital cockpit platform performance comparison:
Similarly, we have made an incomplete summary of the specific highlights of the digital cockpit of Qualcomm Snapdragon's 4th generation car, which can refer to the following table:
It is also worth mentioning that just last month, Baidu's smart car brand announced that the smart cockpit chip of their first mass-produced car will be equipped with Qualcomm's 4th-generation Snapdragon auto digital cockpit platform, which means that Jidu will be the first car company in China to announce the use of Qualcomm's 4th generation platform.
Since its establishment in March this year, Jidu Automobile has put the research and development of intelligent areas such as intelligent cockpit and intelligent driving in the forefront, and is now collaborating on the development of intelligent cockpits and intelligent driving functions based on SIMA Car (Software Integration Mule Car) and the Baidu Apollo team. It is expected that at the Beijing Auto Show to be held in April next year, we will be able to see the figure of the Jidu concept car, and we are still looking forward to it.
Here we say 7nm, 5nm, but probably ordinary consumers do not understand how a huge leap in this short 2nm progress is for technology, first of all, a few nm means the process of the chip, to put it bluntly, it is the width between the transistors inside the chip (also called line width). According to calculations, the performance of each 1nm forward of the transistor width will be increased by 30%-60%, so as to achieve the premise of no change in volume, improve performance and reduce energy consumption. The smaller the number before nm, the more advanced the technology. You can imagine giving you a chip of the same size and letting you put a transistor in it, is it necessarily more than 7nm transistors to put 5nm transistors.
Look at the following figure for the appearance of the traditional transistor, the current flows between the Source end and the Thin end, the Gate is equivalent to the gate, the width of the Gate L is the line width, we can use a shorter path to shuttle at both ends, the efficiency goes up, and the energy consumption is also small.
Let's take a simple example in life, for example, if we have to travel for 10 days, we have to bring as much clothing as possible in the suitcase, so is it more to throw each piece of clothing into it or we fold each piece of clothing flat or roll it into a thin roll and seal it in a compression bag? Of course, it is the latter, and the more the functions of the suitcase of the same size are naturally better, so how to make the size of the clothes smaller is the level of wisdom and technology. The same goes for analog chips.
So why is the smaller the number, the lower the power consumption? The same popular saying, just like an electric car was supposed to run 7 kilometers to charge, now there is a charging station at 5 kilometers is not equal to running 2 kilometers less, power consumption is naturally reduced, compared to more energy saving.
Now you should understand why the progress in the process is so difficult, and you can also understand how remarkable a breakthrough Qualcomm has brought the digital cockpit into the 5nm era, which means that the pace of development of smart cars is finally catching up with the footsteps of mobile devices, and the 4th generation of Snapdragon auto digital cockpit platform will lead the trend of the times together with the new generation of Snapdragon 8 mobile platform.
If you want to do a good job, you must first use it, and if you want the car to do well, a chip as small as a chip must also be polished to the extreme and perfect. With the rapid development of automotive intelligence and networking, the indicator requirements for chip computing power and performance will be higher and higher, last year's 2nd generation of 820A chips or 14nm, this year's 3rd generation of 8155 7nm chips have become the mainstream, wait until next year's 5nm 4th generation Snapdragon digital cockpit platform will also be mass production as scheduled, it can be seen that the iteration and update of technology is so rapid, we have witnessed Qualcomm's outstanding contribution and peak status in the field of intelligent cockpit chips, We also look forward to domestic chip manufacturers can continue to join the trend of promoting the progress of the times.
We are pleased to see that in recent years, many excellent domestic chip manufacturers have developed equally rapidly, like Horizon Company, which has a series of chips, after 5 years of development, the black sesame company that has launched Huashan No. 2 A1000Pro, and it is worth mentioning that in recent days, Core Qing Technology has launched China's first 7nm process of intelligent cockpit chip "Dragon Eagle One", which is expected to be the first in next year to achieve mass production in Geely's main models. We look forward to more such high-tech companies to continue to emerge, leading us out of the chip shortage dilemma and technical bottlenecks as soon as possible.
"Although the chip is small, all the organs are complete", you can really pay attention to the future car selection process, we need to experience together, to try, urge manufacturers to constantly update their products, so that consumers can enjoy a safer and smarter travel experience, let us look forward to it.