"We are facing the advent of an era of smart cars, and many of our friends may not realize how profoundly this era will change the world." This is what Yu Kai, founder and CEO of Horizon, said at the previous Horizon Journey 5 press conference.
From July 2015, Horizon proposed the concept of AI chips;
By June 2017, it will be put into industry verification and become the first customer of TSMC AI chip in the world;
Then in December of the same year, the first edge artificial intelligence chip was launched;
Then, in August 2019, Horizon launched China's first vehicle-grade AI chip;
……
After all these years, what is the size of Horizon's strategy and product matrix today?
Soft and hard combination, good results
Horizon is the algorithm company that understands chips the most, and it is also the chip company that understands algorithms the most.
(Horizon BPU algorithm leader - Luo Heng)
Horizon designed the high-performance autonomous driving processor architecture BPU (brain processing unit). BPU uses a number of innovative technologies, including high-performance, low-latency data concurrency processing, pulsating arrays to improve the speed of data parallelism, process computing to make storage and computing less distinct, and optimization such as sparsity.
At the same time, with the help of neural networks to calculate, you can get a fairly high computing performance and low power consumption to process a large amount of data.
The Horizon Design Journey 5 chip, if you compare it with the NVIDIA Orin-X chip, you will find that the Journey 5 only uses half of the chip area and half of the computing resources, but can get a fairly high computing performance, while completing massive data processing with lower power consumption.
At present, Horizon has a series of vehicle-grade AI chips covering the journey series that support L2 to L4 intelligent driving applications, and also has the experience of algorithm knowhow and mass production engineering for the intelligent landing of the whole scene vehicle.
Through soft and hard collaborative optimization, Horizon will continue to expand the advantages of algorithm leadership and continuously accelerate the efficiency of product iteration. In addition, Horizon also has its own self-developed smart cabin intelligent driving solution to achieve the full-scenario capability of smart cars.
Full-scenario capability
Horizon currently offers three solutions, including Horizon Matrix Mono Forward-Looking Assisted Driving, Horizon Matrix Pilot Pilot Pilot Assisted Driving, and Horizon Halo In-Vehicle Intelligent Interaction.
01
Horizon Matrix Pilot
Pilot Assisted Driving Solution
This package can be flexibly adapted to fuel vehicles and new energy vehicles, and it is expected that many models of four car companies will be installed and listed in 2022.
At horizon production-grade smart driving technology experience days, I also participated in the demo night test with Horizon Matrix Pilot.
The DEMO car is modified from the mass production version of the ideal ONE model, which is equipped with an additional Horizon Journey 3 chip compared to the mass production ideal ONE model, and adds 5 circumferential cameras to cover the whole vehicle 360°.
The main route scenarios experienced in this night test include:
Following the car cruise, Cutin/Cutout response, automatic lane change, automatic entry and exit ramp, Y fork in the ramp to select the main, overtaking, large truck offset avoidance, large curvature bend...
02
Horizon Matrix Mono
Forward-looking assisted driving solution
This is a mass-produced 8-megapixel single-vision ADAS solution, which has taken the lead in achieving large-scale front-loading mass production in 2021, and has been mass-produced and fixed-point by more than ten models of ADAS solutions by many car companies.
At the Horizon Mass Production Intelligent Driving Technology Experience Day, horizon showed us the production model of this solution as the Changan UNI-V.
Equipped with a forward-looking camera and five millimeter-wave radars, the vehicle can achieve effective perception of vehicles, pedestrians, lane lines, traffic signs and other targets. Therefore, Changan UNI-V supports functions such as full-speed domain adaptive cruise and lever lane change.
The intelligent driving system is divided into three steps: first sense, in decision-making, and finally execution. For the cooperation between Changan Automobile and Horizon, Horizon will provide Chips and Perception Algorithms to Changan, and the decision-making and execution parts will be self-researched by Changan Automobile.
03
Horizon Halo
Vehicle intelligent interaction solution
At present, horizon Halo in-vehicle intelligent interaction solution has nearly 50 production models of cooperation (including pre-research, fixed-point, mass production; including UNI-T, GAC Aeon, etc.), accounting for more than 62% of the intelligent cockpit market equipped with visual perception.
I have also experienced this set of programs before, interested partners can watch the video at that time:
The above schemes all use Horizon's journey series chips, and adopt or partially use Horizon's self-developed algorithm. In other words, Horizon can provide a "one-stop service" from hardware to software, supporting both "single point" and "package".
If the car company does not want to develop its own, it can directly buy a "package".
How to test the technical capabilities of the product?
Large-scale mass production must be the primary criterion for testing the technical capabilities of intelligent driving products.
(Vice President of Horizon - Yu Yinan)
Horizon is currently the only enterprise in China that has realized the front-loading mass production of vehicle-level artificial intelligence chips. In 2020, Horizon officially opened the first year of front-loading mass production of China's automotive smart chips, achieving a breakthrough from 0 to 1. At present, the shipment volume of Horizon Journey chip has exceeded 1 million pieces, and 45+ front-loading mass production projects have been fixed.
If you want to maintain mass production at scale, the horizon as Tier1 must work closely with enough OEMs and Tier1 that are strong enough. OEMs that have reached cooperation with Horizon include:
Audi, BYD, Changan Automobile, Great Wall Motor, Dongfeng Motor, GAC Group, Hongqi, Jiangqi Group, Ideal Automobile, Chery Automobile, SAIC Motor, etc.
Tier1 suppliers who have partnered include:
Desay SV, Neusoft, Continental, Freetech, Faurecia, Huayang, Asia Pacific, InBev Supercomputer, etc...
Up to now, the models that have been announced to be equipped with the Horizon Journey chip include:
Changan UNI-T, Chery Ant, Zhiji Automobile, Changan UNI-K, GAC Aian AION Y, Dongfeng Lantu FREE, JAC Sihao QX, GAC Trumpchi GS4 Plus, SAIC Maxus MIFA Concept Car, 2021 Ideal ONE, Great Wall Haval H9-2022, Changan UNI-V, etc...
At last
Looking back at the path the horizon has taken, we can see the rapid development of the horizon today.
Just two days ago, the horizon sent two good news:
One is that the Horizon Intelligent Driving Environment Awareness Project is ASPICE CL2 certified. ASPICE is one of the criteria for evaluating the software R&D capabilities of suppliers in the global automotive industry, divided into six levels. Among them, CL2 level represents the ability to complete product development related work, formulate rigorous and comprehensive project plans in advance, and effectively implement project monitoring and management, with the ability to deliver high-quality products on time.
In addition, Horizon and BYD announced a fixed-point cooperation, BYD will be equipped with Horizon Journey 5 chips on some of its models to create a company-to-berth integration plan, and the first model will be listed as early as mid-2023.
Behind the good news is the recognition of Horizon's capabilities, which is also more conducive to the expansion of Horizon partners and the increase of landing models. And these will become the cornerstone of Horizon's achievements in leading domestic AI chip companies.