Reporter | Li Wenbo
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From the only option for auto companies to mass-produce autonomous driving chips, to former customers waving goodbye and changing doors, Intel's Israeli chip company Mobileye is vividly performing a "hurt Zhongyong" drama.
Intel cannot and will not allow such large-scale churn of customers to continue to stage. At CES 2022, Mobileye unveiled the most advanced and powerful EyeQ Ultra system integration chip built for autonomous driving to date.
EyeQ Ultra chip hash rate of 176 TOPS, based on the seventh generation EyeQ chip technology architecture, designed to provide consumer-grade solutions for L4 autonomous vehicles. The EyeQ Ultra system integration chip is expected to be available by the end of 2023 and fully realize vehicle-grade mass production in 2025.
The performance of the EyeQ Ultra is equivalent to the performance of 10 EyeQ5 pieces combined, using a 5nm process, EyeQ Ultra can meet all the needs and application scenarios of L4 level. Like its predecessor, EyeQ Ultra is designed collaboratively with Mobileye software, and this design idea is the "black box" that has been widely criticized by a large number of car companies.
The EyeQ Ultra chip simultaneously processes input data from two sensing subsystems, including a pure camera subsystem and a subsystem that integrates radar and lidar, as well as the vehicle's central computing system, high-precision maps, and driving decision software. EyeQ Ultra's hash rate is only 176 TOPS, which is completely behind the performance of NVIDIA DRIVE Orin's 254 TOPS, which is the king of computing power in the current market.
Qualcomm also came to the top to launch the Snapdragon Ride platform, the computing power of a single chip is divided into 10, 20, 30, 60TOPS, support multi-chip combinations, the overall computing power of up to 700 TOPS.
EyeQUltra will integrate Mobileye's road network information management (REM) self-driving car mapping technology to collect road information with millions of vehicles on the road that are already equipped with Mobileye chips, and then create a Mobileye roadbook (Roadbook) to provide information about the driving route ahead in the form of cloud access and real-time updates.
Released at the same time as the EyeQ Ultra, there are two new EyeQ system integration chips for advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), the EyeQ 6L and EyeQ 6H, and the shipment of EyeQ system integration chips just exceeded 100 million units at the end of last year.
The EyeQ 6L is a follow-up to the EyeQ 4, with a package size of 55% of the EyeQ 4. The EyeQ 6L is used for entry-level and high-end (L2) ADAS. The chip began offering samples last year and will be mass-produced in mid-2023.
The EyeQ 6H uses a full-loop view camera to achieve high-end ADAS and partial autopilot functions. In terms of power, it is equivalent to two EyeQ 5 system integration chips. The centralized solution will provide all L2+ ADAS capabilities, multi-camera processing capabilities including parking cameras, and the ability to support third-party applications such as visual parking and driver monitoring. The EyeQ 6H will begin offering samples this year and mass production will begin at the end of 2024.
The EyeQ 6 system integration chips will all be manufactured using a 7nm process.
Chinese consumers' first impression of the EyeQ chip stemmed from the ES8, the first mass-produced model released by Chinese intelligent electric vehicle company NIO in 2018, which was equipped with the EyeQ4 chip, which was the most advanced advanced driver assistance system at that time.
According to the company's official website, Mobileye's products have been selected by 27 automobile companies, including Volkswagen, General Motors, BMW, Ford, Honda and Nissan.
Tesla was also a mobileye customer, but Elon Musk is not happy with Mobileye, saying: "Mobileye's agreements with other automakers make it impossible for them to keep up with Tesla's technological developments. They are third-party suppliers and must support hundreds of models that fit their peers at other automakers. ”
Since then, major auto companies have abandoned EyeQ chips, Weilai, Xiaopeng, Weima and the ideal next-generation flagship models have adopted NVIDIA DRIVE Orin chips, and BMW has also recently announced that it will break up with Mobileye and switch to Qualcomm.
The good news is that Geely's smart pure electric brand, Extreme Kr, will cooperate with Mobileye to develop a pure electric vehicle with L4 self-driving capabilities, which will be launched as early as 2024. The new car will be equipped with six EyeQ 5 system integration chips, which are finally 144 TOPS.