In the era of automobile transformation, everyone knows that cars must be intelligent, and cockpits must also be intelligent. But no matter how full-stack self-research the main engine factory is, the foundation of the intelligent cockpit, the high-performance intelligent cockpit chip represented by the Snapdragon 8155, is still firmly grasped in the hands of a few manufacturers such as Qualcomm.
However, this status quo may be broken by a Chinese company!
On the evening of March 24, ECARCOM, a company backed by Geely Group and with intelligent cockpit as its core business, released high-, medium and low-grade high-performance intelligent cockpit hardware solutions, and also announced that it will be equipped with the FlymeAuto vehicle system developed by Meizu, and the intelligent cockpit may enter an era of involution of computing power, configuration, system and application!
Autonomous chip, performance benchmark 8155
As soon as it came up, ECARCOM released the first big move - Dragon Eagle No. 1. This is a car machine chip designed by chip company Xinqing Technology, which adopts 7nm process and multi-core heterogeneous ARM architecture, built-in 4 Cortex-A76 performance cores, the highest main frequency is 2.4GHZ, and is equipped with 4 A55 performance cores and 100K DMIPS computing power.
At the same time, it is also equipped with a 14-core GPU, 900G FLOPS computing power, support 4K/2K resolution 60 frame output, and support up to 4 screens. In addition, it also has a programmable NPU with a computing power of 8TOPS, and integrates independent DSP, DPU, VPU and other acceleration engines.
This parameter can be said to be quite powerful.
You know, the current top-notch car chip Qualcomm Snapdragon 8155, its performance parameters are CPU 105K DMIPS, CPU 1000G FLOPS, and there is no built-in NPU, AI computing power is only 4TOPS. Although the Dragon Eagle No. 1 is slightly inferior in CPU and GPU performance, because it has an independent NPU, it can accelerate applications such as AI voice assistants, and can play a key role in today's AI popularity.
It is not difficult to see that this car machine chip designed by China has been targeting the most mainstream 8155 chip since its birth, and the strong parameters also confirm that it has the possibility of benchmarking with the most advanced mass-produced intelligent cockpit chip in the world, and the status quo of Chinese car companies being "stuck in the neck" on the car machine chip will be greatly alleviated.
Three sets of configurations, hardware rolls to new heights
This time, ECARCOM first released three intelligent cockpit computing platforms: Antora 1000, Antora 1000 Pro, and Makalu.
Among them, the Antola 1000 computing platform is the "basic model", internally codenamed E04. It uses a single Dragon Eagle One SoC as the core, adopts high-performance LPDDR5 memory, supports 6400MHz frequency and up to 16GB specifications, compared with LPDDR4X memory, data transmission speed and bandwidth are increased by 50%, while power consumption is reduced by 10%.
In terms of modules, Antora 1000 adopts a highly integrated design, and the pin pin of the module is reduced by 40% (about 600pin) compared with the SoC SMD, while a large number of components are reduced, so that the cost of PCB is reduced by 80%, and the motherboard is 8-layer through-hole, and the area is reduced by 10%.
Based on its powerful performance and module optimization, the Antora 1000 offers advantages in many features of the intelligent cockpit, such as the system's cold start time of less than 13 seconds; Sleep wake-up takes less than 3 seconds; It supports up to 12 camera inputs, 360 panoramic image function, cold start time of less than 5 seconds, etc.
Theoretically, the intelligent cockpit system based on the Antora 1000 computing platform can reach the current flagship level in terms of experience, but in ECARCOM's view, this is not enough.
As mentioned earlier, with the entry of manufacturers such as ECARCOM, intelligent cockpit hardware will also usher in a new wave of "involution", and the pursuit of cockpit hardware configuration and performance by OEMs will grow exponentially like intelligent driving chips.
Therefore, ECARCOM has also launched two more powerful products, one of which is the Antora 1000 Pro.
The Antora 1000 Pro can actually be understood as the Antora 1000 x 2, and there is not even a separate internal codename. It is equipped with two Loonghawk No. 1 SoCs to achieve on-chip communication through a high-speed interconnect bus custom-designed by Xinqing Technology for ECARCOM, with almost no loss of performance.
In terms of performance parameters, the two Dragon Eagle One bring 200K DMIPS CPU computing power and 1800G FLOPS GPU computing power to the Antora 1000 Pro, and is equipped with 32GB LPDDR5 memory, which can support up to 8 screens separately.
At the same time, because the Antora 1000 Pro contains 2 NPUs and the system computing power reaches 16TOPS, it can also integrate the parking domain, support APA assisted parking and RPA remote parking, and realize the ability of cabin parking.
From the performance point of view, Antolla 1000 Pro already has the ability to compete with Qualcomm Snapdragon 8295, whose performance parameters are CPU 200K DMIPS and GPU 3100G FLOPS.
More importantly, the first model of Qualcomm Snapdragon 8295, Robo-01, will not be officially delivered until the third quarter of this year, and the first production car Lynk & Co 08 equipped with Antora 1000 Pro will be officially unveiled on March 30, and who will be first in the official delivery time has not yet been determined.
So is the Antora 1000 Pro the cockpit ceiling? Of course not, ECARCOM's real flagship is Makalu! According to ECARCOM, Makalu may be the most powerful intelligent cockpit platform to date.
Unlike the Antora 1000, ECARCOM Makalu chose to work with AMD to build on the Ryzen V2000 embedded processor and the Radeon RX 6600 GPU.
Makalu is an x86 platform based on the capabilities of a desktop-class processor and GPU, giving it up to 394K DMIPS CPU power and 10.1 T FLOPS GPU computing power, 32GB of LPDDR4X memory and 8GB of GDDR6 dedicated video memory, powerful enough to support UE5 engines and play triple-A games.
At the same time, due to the powerful graphics capabilities of the Radeon RX 6600 GPU, the Makalu platform has also reached an unprecedented level of screen support, up to 6 4K screen outputs at the same time, and also supports a high refresh rate of 4K@120Hz, which greatly increases the upper limit of the visual experience of the intelligent cockpit.
More importantly, according to ECARCOM staff, Makalu's GPU also supports "pluggable", 6600 is only a standard GPU, if the OEM needs to adapt to RX 6950, the future will continue to adapt to RX 7000 series GPU, so that image processing capabilities jump again, GPU performance is no longer a bottleneck of intelligent cockpit capabilities.
Don't forget the Meizu system, the car brain
The above mentioned is only the intelligent cockpit computing platform, but in response to the current convergence trend of automotive domain controllers, ECARCOM has also launched a cabin-driving integrated platform - automotive brain central computing platform.
The first-generation automotive brain integrates the "Dragon Eagle One" and the advanced intelligent driving chip provided by Black Sesame, as well as the car control MCU. Through ultra-high-speed intercore communication, it can achieve a highly competitive cabin-driver integration function in terms of cost, greatly reduce the complexity of the whole vehicle, and improve development efficiency and product performance.
At the end of the conference, ECARCOM also released the last big trick - the Flyme Auto vehicle system developed by Meizu.
ECARCOM announced at the press conference that it has reached an exclusive strategic partnership with Xingji Meizu Group to jointly create the Flyme Auto intelligent cockpit solution. The Lynk & Co 08, which will be unveiled on March 30, will be equipped with both the Antora 1000 Pro platform and the Flyme Auto system, which once again raises people's expectations for the Lynk & Co 08 cockpit experience.
According to the plan, these three sets of intelligent cockpit computing platforms will perform their respective duties, and the Antora 1000 is mainly for the mainstream market and traditional fuel vehicles; The Antora 1000 Pro is mainly for mid-range models, hybrid vehicles, electric vehicles, etc.; Makalu, on the other hand, is mainly targeted for high-end electric models, such as Polestar, Lotus and so on.
Together with Automotive Brain and Flyme Auto, ECARCOM will achieve full coverage from hardware to software in the field of intelligent cockpits, and covers both X86 and ARM architectures.
I have to say that this ECARCOM really gave us enough surprises, but in the end, product planning and release is one thing, and real mass production loading is another. What kind of market performance will Antora 1000, Makalu, Auto Brain, Flyme Auto, etc. have, and what will be the actual performance in production cars? It depends on the actual car to be listed before you know.
We might as well look forward to the upcoming Lynk & Co 08.