At the beginning of each year, CES, the international consumer electronics show in Las Vegas, gathers global technology companies to highlight the latest black technology and attract electronic fans around the world. 2022 CES was held as scheduled, at this time the car has become an "electronic big toy", only two days before the exhibition, new products and technologies around the car have been dazzling, this year's smart car weather vane here exposed the corner.
Car chip contest: countdown to getting on the car
What was one of the hottest problems with cars last year? chip! Whether it is a shortage of goods or a technological upgrade, the progress of chips has touched the hearts of car companies again and again.
At this year's CES show, Mobileye issued three products in one go. The first is the launch of EyeQ Ultra, a single-package autonomous vehicle integrated chip supercomputing platform designed for end-to-end autonomous driving. Built on the proven Mobileye EyeQ architecture, EyeQ Ultra optimizes computing power and performance to achieve 176 TOPS, which is equivalent to the sum of the performance of 10 EyeQ 5s, and the process is 5 nm.
Somewhat regrettably, this product is expected to be available at the end of 2023 and fully realize vehicle-grade mass production in 2025. The Qualcomm Snapdragon Ride platform already has plans to get on the bus this year, and the Nvidia Drive Hyperion 8 will also be opened to car companies in 2024, according to this schedule, Mobileye's pace is slightly slower.
Mobileye also introduced the next generation of EyeQ system integration chips for advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS): EyeQ 6L and EyeQ 6H. Both EyeQ 6 system integration chips will be manufactured using a 7nm process.
The EyeQ 6L is a successor to the EyeQ 4, with a package size of only 55% of the EyeQ 4. This all-in-one windshield solution delivers higher deep learning hash rate (TOPS) at ultra-low power for energy-efficient entry-level and high-end (L2) ADAS. Samples of the chip began last year and mass production is expected in mid-2023.
The EyeQ 6H enables high-end ADAS and partial autopilot with a full-surround view camera configuration. In terms of power, it is equivalent to two EyeQ 5 system integration chips. Samples of the most advanced ADAS system integration chip in the EyeQ family will begin this year and volume production is expected by the end of 2024.
On January 5, Qualcomm unveiled its automotive business on the Snapdragon Ride platform for ADAS/AD, announcing a number of cooperation dynamics, including helping GM Cadillac LYRIQ and BMW's autonomous driving platform.
At the same time, Qualcomm announced that in response to the changing needs of the ADAS/AD field, it has launched the latest product in the Snapdragon Ride platform portfolio, the Snapdragon Ride Vision System, which has a new open, scalable, and modular computer vision software stack, built on a system-on-chip (SoC) based on the 4nm process, designed to optimize the deployment of front-view and surround view cameras, and support advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and autonomous driving (AD).
NVIDIA officially announced several mass production plans from the commercialization point of view, including building an L4-level unmanned domain controller with Tucson in the future, which will be equipped with NVIDIA DRIVE Orin; Jidu's first mass production model will be equipped with NVIDIA DRIVE Orin SoC (System-on-Chip), which is expected to be launched in 2023.
Another AI chip player, Ambar, released the latest AI domain controller chip CV3 series at CES. Based on a fully scalable, energy-efficient CVflow architecture, the CV3 Series SoCs deliver the industry's highest AI processing performance—up to 500 eTOPS, up to 16 Arm Cortex-A78AE CPU cores, and the CV3 centralized AI perception processing (including high-pixel vision processing, millimeter-wave radar, lidar, and ultrasonic radar) through a single chip integration of multiple sensors. The deep integration of multiple sensors and the path planning of autonomous vehicles help to create ADAS systems and L2+ to L4 level autonomous driving systems.
It is reported that the CV3 series chips are expected to provide the first samples in the first half of 2022.
Intelligent driving chips are booming, and high-computing chips will also be on the car this year, how will the exciting car regulation chip format subvert the car?
Self-driving those things: breaking hearts for soft and hard decoupling
Software-defined cars are no longer a new word, and the mission of the traditional Tier1 is like a soft and hard decoupling shift, for which these traditional European TIER1s have made a big show at CES.
ZF's world-first next-generation high-performance computing platform– the Vehicle Motion Domain (VMD) controller. The VMD controller is a central computer for all types of chassis platforms, vehicle movements and body functions, next-generation software-defined vehicles, future domains, and regional vehicle electrical and electronic architectures.
"The design and architecture of the new version of ZF VMD controllers is based on this open and modular approach: operators can use ZF's own application and safety software, as well as from other developers or third-party suppliers," said André Engelke, Head of ZF's Vehicle Motion Control System Division. ”
ZF also introduced its autopilot sensor components and is now introducing a portfolio of next-generation radars, including mid-range radar and full-range radar, which includes optional advanced 3-d antennas and systems equipped with long-range radar heads that can input data into a CPU for 360-degree sensing at an affordable price.
Its sensor package also includes a front-facing camera and lidar, and from 2022 onwards, it will assist in the introduction of ibeONEXT solid-state lidar, and future generations of lidar are also under development, which will balance reasonable cost with superior performance.
When it comes to lidar, Valeo is not to be outdone, after all, it is the world's first company to mass-produce lidar.
At CES, Valeo's third-generation scanning lidar will make its public debut and will be available in 2024. The lidar can detect objects that are invisible to the naked eye, cameras and radar from 200 meters away. It can identify all objects on the road and even calculate the correct braking distance by measuring the density of raindrops. It can also use algorithms to predict the trajectory of surrounding vehicles and trigger necessary actions accordingly. Support vehicles can take control of their own driving, even at 130 km/h on the highway. In addition to long-range scanning lidar, Valeo has also developed a new lidar with a close field of view, the Valeo NFL (near-field lidar), which is also the first appearance.
Valeo Safe Insight technology in the cockpit was officially unveiled at CES. It uses three technologies, the Driver Monitoring System (DMS), which scans the face to identify the driver and issues a warning when they are distracted or tired driving; the Internal Surveillance System (IMS), which identifies the passengers in the car, determines where they are sitting, and reminds the passengers to fasten their seat belts; and the in-car radar system (IRS) monitors the vital signs in the cockpit while the vehicle is stationary and issues a timely alert in case a child is forgotten in the car.
At CES, Aptiv showcased a series of latest developments around the development of intelligent automotive architecture SVAtm, especially regional controllers such as power data centers (PDCs) and vehicle central controllers (CVC), making SVAtms fully operational and enabling software-defined vehicles.
SVATM is an upgradable, open vehicle architecture platform that reduces total cost of ownership and facilitates mass production of feature-rich, highly automated vehicles. It is not a single product, but a hierarchical architecture with logical blocks that can be flexibly extended.
At the Ampov booth was a working SVATM architecture. When the narrator approaches the architecture, the zone controller in the architecture is immediately awakened to support functions such as keyless doors opening and mobile phone keys that require immediate response. Even in the case of network latency, engineers can reduce costs by changing the topology and eliminating independent networks without compromising performance. In the field, the architecture also completes a synchronized instant response.
One of SVATM's goals is to improve the scalability of automotive features and functions, whether throughout the vehicle lifecycle, platform, décor, or personalization. Together with Aptiv's open service platform OSP with standardized interfaces, as well as appropriate development tools, exponential innovation can be unleashed.
Bosch also revealed its investment in software, and Bosch will invest 4 billion euros per year to enhance software capabilities, of which about 3 billion euros will be invested in the travel business. In order to lead the mobility market of the future of software-defined vehicles, Bosch plans to integrate the R&D activities of independent applications into the same R&D department in mid-2022. In the future, ETAS, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Bosch, will develop and sell the basic software, middleware, cloud services, and R&D tools of Automotive General.
Che Yun summary
CES is a feast of science and technology, and new technologies born for cars are breaking through the boundaries of cars and bringing science fiction into reality.
In addition to the appearance of new technologies and new products, a large number of automotive industry chain enterprises signed contracts with partners during the exhibition, which means that the pace of mass production and commercialization of smart cars is accelerating, and the space for technology companies to play in the automotive field has become larger.
Judging from this year's CES, the former industry giants still occupy a dominant position, trying to transform in automotive chips, automotive architecture, and automotive software, but whether the transformation is complete and stable is also testing them, after all, there are still many new forces behind the start-ups trying to break the pattern.