Car stuff (public number: chedongxi)
Author | Haohan
Edit | Juice
This week, horizon, a domestic automotive AI chip company, held a mass-produced intelligent driving technology experience day, showing some of its technologies and products that will soon land in the field of mass production.
It is understood that horizon journey 5 chip will be the first mass production in the domestic well-known main engine factory this year, and the next generation of horizon line journey 6 chip will also be launched in 2023.
In terms of smart driving products, Horizon Matrix Mono front-view assisted driving solution, Horizon Matrix Pilot pilot assist driving solution, and Horizon Halo in-vehicle intelligent interaction solution are also demonstrated. And the car was also invited to experience the horizon of this weekly vision perception high-speed pilot assisted driving system.
▲The scene of the event
For Horizon, mass production is the primary criterion for testing the strength of its intelligent driving technology. As early as 2020, Horizon landed the first Journey 2 chip on Changan UNI-T.
By the end of 2021, Horizon has officially reached the shipment of 1 million Journey series chips in the industry, and in the field of ADAS and the field of intelligent cockpit, Horizon has accumulated more than 50 models of front-loading mass production points.
Yu Yinan, vice president of Horizon, said that Horizon will provide the industry with all-scenario vehicle intelligence technologies and solutions, and the chip + underlying algorithm is the key to helping intelligent driving land quickly.
First, the journey within 5 years of mass production Journey 6 is already on the way
For automobiles, the products and technologies of the inspection of automobiles, if only one standard is mentioned, it is mass production.
In addition to the Journey 2 and Journey 3 chips that have already been mass-produced on Changan UNI-T and the 2021 Ideal ONE, Horizon's Journey 5 chip will achieve its first mass production in the fourth quarter of this year.
And just yesterday, Horizon announced a fixed-point cooperation with BYD. The two companies plan that BYD models equipped with Horizon Journey 5 autopilot chips will be available as early as mid-2023. Based on this chip, the two sides will create an integrated plan for travel and berth, and realize high-level autonomous driving functions. In addition to BYD, horizon journey 5 chip has also won the fixed point contract of many domestic OEMs.
▲Horizon Journey series chip roadmap
In terms of the key parameters of automatic driving, Horizon Journey 5 is based on TSMC's 16nm process, and the AI computing power can reach 128TOPS.
In terms of core architecture, the CPU part of the Horizon Quest 5 chip adopts the 8-core ARM Cortex A55, and the AI computing unit adopts the dual-core Horizon Bayesian architecture BPU (Brain Processor Unit). At the same time, the Journey 5 chip also has 2 ISP cores, computer vision engines, 2 DSP cores, and video encoding and decoding units.
As cars become more and more intelligent, the requirements for delay are getting higher and higher, and it is reported that the forward-looking perception based on the Journey 5 chip can be 60 milliseconds, while having a low power consumption of 30 watts.
▲Horizon Journey 5 key parameters
Yu Yinan said that Horizon will maintain the rhythm of launching a chip in about a year, and achieve mass production in about 12 months after launch.
"Not only can we do the chip very well, but we can also better support customers and partners to integrate as quickly as possible to achieve mass production, which is the core capability of Horizon." Yu Yinan said.
In addition to Journey 5, the next generation of chip Journey 6 under the horizon is also on the way.
It is reported that the Journey 6 will use the BPU Nash architecture, with more than 512TOPS AI computing power, and support access to more than 16 high-resolution cameras. According to the Horizon Journey series chip roadmap, the Journey 6 chip will most likely be launched in 2023.
▲Horizon Vice President Yu Yinan
Second, experience the Weekly Vision Expressway NOA large curvature curve without taking over
After listening to the explanation of the product and technical route, Che Dongshi also personally experienced the high-speed pilot driving assistance system of the horizon.
In terms of computing hardware, the pilot assisted driving system is based on three Horizon Journey 3 chips, and the AI computing power exceeds 15TOPS. Moreover, thanks to the advantages of high performance and low power consumption of the Journey series chips, the driving and parking functions can be integrated into the same domain controller, making the overall intelligent driving assistance system more compact and convenient for the whole vehicle layout.
In terms of perception hardware, the system adopts 6-channel ADAS driving camera and 4-channel surround view parking camera to achieve 360° perception coverage of the whole vehicle. It is worth mentioning that it is also the industry's first 360-degree visual perception scheme that uses passive heat dissipation.
▲Perception hardware configuration
According to Yu Yinan, this set of solutions will be mass-produced around the end of July this year, and will provide different combinations of sensing hardware and software according to the different needs of different customers.
The car was invited to rush before mass production, and actually experienced this system on the highway around Beijing, and this time the car was riding on a horizon DEMO test vehicle, which was modified from a mass production model.
In the actual experience process, when the vehicle enters the highway section (with a high-precision map), it can open the NOA function. When opened, the vehicle will have a more obvious speed increase, giving the driver and occupants a more obvious acceleration sensation, and then the acceleration tends to be flat until the set speed limit is reached.
▲DEMO test vehicle based on ideal ONE modification
Horizon's developers told the car that such a slightly abrupt acceleration was "deliberate", and that it was done to remind the occupants that the vehicle had entered the NOA and needed to be aware of the road conditions at all times, quickly taking over the vehicle in an emergency.
"Of course, this setting can be tailored to the needs of car companies." The developer told the car something.
Since horizon's high-speed NOA system is equipped with six cameras, the perception of the front side of the vehicle is enhanced. In this regard, the car thing also actually experienced a large curvature turn in the open NOA state.
▲The vehicle makes a large-angle turn
In the corners, the vehicle can maintain a continuous driving speed of about 40km/h, and in the curve with a large curvature of about 200 meters, the vehicle completely passes by itself, and the safety officer does not take over. The developers of the horizon told the car stuff that in their daily tests, in this same curve, the vehicle could pass at a speed of about 70km/h without taking over.
In general, the overall performance of this high-speed NOA system on the horizon is good, and in the actual road experience of more than 30km from east to west, the safety officer only took over once in the blurred section of the high-precision map, and basically has been in the first echelon of the high-speed NOA function on the market.
▲ Vehicle is changing lanes (150% accelerated playback)
Conclusion: The domestic car regulation AI chip is accelerating on the car
At present, the wave of "new four modernizations" of automobiles is accelerating the rapid change of the automotive industry, and the application of artificial intelligence, big data and other technologies has made AI chips become the digital engine of automobiles. Moreover, intelligent cars defined by the intelligence of the whole vehicle are becoming the consensus of the industry.
As one of the few domestic automotive AI chip companies, Horizon can achieve rapid front-loading mass production on the car, which represents the rapid improvement of domestic automotive chip design capabilities and is accelerating the rapid progress of the entire industry.