On April 26, MediaTek held a media conference in Beijing and officially released the new products of the Dimensity automotive platform, among which the Dimensity automotive cockpit platform CT-X1 uses a 3nm process, and the CT-Y1 and CT-Y0 use a 4nm process, which can bring important computing power breakthroughs to the intelligent cockpit.
At the same time, the Dimensity automotive connectivity platform offers a wider range of intelligent connectivity capabilities with the first 5G NTN satellite broadband technology in the Ku-band, in-vehicle 3GPP 5G R17 modem, in-vehicle high-performance Wi-Fi and Bluetooth solutions.
The Dimensity automotive cockpit platform also integrates the ARMV9 architecture, with built-in Al computing units and end-to-side generative AL lightweight technology, which can meet the accuracy of Al calculations and make more efficient use of memory bandwidth and memory capacity.
MediaTek Senior Vice President You Renjie, MediaTek Vice President Zhang Yutai, MediaTek Vice President and General Manager of Automotive Platform Business Unit Zhang Yu, MediaTek Dimensity Automotive Connectivity Platform Vice President Weizhi Yu, and MediaTek Automotive Electronics Business Vice President Xiong Jian were interviewed by a number of media outlets, including IT Home.
You Renjie, Senior Vice President of MediaTek and General Manager of Computing Unicom Metaverse Business Group
In the interview, IT Home first asked a question related to the intelligent car connection platform, we know that the application of 5G in the automotive industry has been talked about for a long time, but it seems that there are no particularly specific application scenarios that can make people shine. Now that the R17 and R18 standards are already advancing, what are the specific application scenarios of 5G in smart cars?
Weizhi Yu, deputy general manager of MediaTek Dimensity Automotive Connectivity Platform, answered this question. He said that the application of 5G in smart cars is still closely related to the development of the entire ecological chain, not only the installation of 5G in the car has application scenarios, but also the possibility of regulations, as well as the promotion of the entire 5G network.
Weizhi Yu first took his own life in Europe as an example, and said that the network there is very backward, without the support of the network, how can we talk about the application? Many car manufacturers rushed to use 5G when they were just about to go to 5G in 2020, and finally found out where the application was, the same problem. This is an act that requires the linkage of the entire ecological chain.
Second, Weizhi Yu said that 5G itself is not a problem, and some operators are already considering cutting off 4G or even turning off 4G, which means that the landing application of 5G itself is not a problem, and it must be supported by the entire ecological chain. Now that Release 17 and 18 have also landed, how to better make the application environment in the car feel to the end user is more critical.
I've paid for 5G, and I'm going to have real benefits. There are some things that customers can directly feel, such as the amount of data I have a large amount of data and the delay is relatively short, but there are also some things that the end customer does not feel, such as the support for autonomous driving.
Weizhi Yu vividly gave an example that 5G itself is full of big data and large bandwidth, but the most important factor is its real-time performance, which brings some key applications, such as autonomous driving to provide big data support. 5G big data, including some of the closer applications, is only a matter of time, not if, but when.
Xiong Jian, deputy general manager of MediaTek's automotive electronics business department, also added to this problem, saying that 5G application scenarios are actually very rigid now. For example, from the perspective of a single screen, its application is not special, if it is a single screen, a single OS, and a single user, there is actually no rigid need.
But now there are more and more screens in the car, each screen carries an OS, and each OS hosts multiple applications, which will be opened at the same time. For example, the co-pilot is broadcasting a video, the central control is broadcasting navigation, the back row is also broadcasting video, and even the two screens in the back row are playing video, if the chip capability is relatively weak before, if it is done with different domain controllers, it is true that a single does not need to do this, but now the chip capability is very strong, a chip can support 6 screens, and can support multiple operating systems.
For example, if you open four videos at the same time, the overlapping scenes require a wide bandwidth, which is definitely not possible with 4G. Therefore, now in a car, one chip can support multiple screens, multiple OS, and multiple scenarios, so it needs 5G when stacked.
In addition to the 5G connection platform, IT Home also asked another question, that is, about the advanced process, because the Dimensity automotive cockpit platform CT-X1 has adopted the 3nm process, so will the demand for advanced process in the car be more urgent than that of mobile phones?
In this regard, You Renjie, senior deputy general manager of MediaTek, said:
In the past few years, MediaTek has laid down our capabilities in advanced processes, which are mainly reflected in the flagship of the entire mobile phone. I think that in the future, whether it is mobile phones, automobiles, or even other applications, we will continue to maintain the design capabilities of advanced manufacturing processes and continue to launch the most competitive products.
In fact, regarding the advanced manufacturing process, in the later question of another media colleague, You Renjie also made a supplement. The question of this media colleague is: "The current domestic new energy vehicle market is indeed very volatile, the pace of vehicle development is very fast, and overseas is relatively not as strong as the domestic competition." What is the current promotion of MediaTek chips in overseas markets?"
Regarding this question, Yourenjie first said that MediaTek's entire Dimensity automotive platform, including cockpit, smart connection, including Modem, Wi-Fi, GNSS, key component, and future intelligent driving, is aimed at the global market.
At the same time, Yourenjie took this opportunity to further share from the perspective of semiconductors, the chips for the automotive cockpit were mainly provided by NXP, TI, Renesas, etc. in the past, but in the future, the cockpit scene is good, and the scene of intelligent driving is good, due to the extremely high demand for computing power, so advanced processes must be used.
MediaTek's core technology is computing, which includes the computing power of CPU, GPU, NPU, behind the computing represents the advanced process, how quickly it can be mass-produced, and the cost of each advanced process is not something that a small company can deal with.
You Renjie said that MediaTek has a good platform for these products, as well as based on such a platform and core technology, and can continue to invest in the future computing platform, vehicle platform, and then aim at the world market, which is in the medium and long term, you can slowly find that IC design companies with advanced process capabilities can have a foothold in the future generative AI-defined intelligent new energy vehicles, which is one of the unique values that MediaTek can provide in the market.
In addition, in the interview, some media asked AI-related questions, generative AI broke out in the cloud in the past, and it is still quite difficult to land on the device side, because of the limitations of computing power, including memory and bandwidth, it is still quite difficult, so we see that the application of large models on the end side is still relatively in the initial stage. MediaTek has 7 billion and 13 billion large models to deploy, what kind of work have they done to support it, is it simply to make the NPU bigger, or do they have some unique and exclusive technology?
In this regard, Zhang Yutai introduced that on the end side, for example, to solve the bandwidth, MediaTek has the ability to compress, such as 16 billion to 4 billion, these capabilities are very obvious. In addition, MediaTek also has some algorithmically optimized LoRA technology in it.
"We see that the parameters of the large model that friends can now support on the end side should not be able to reach 7 billion and 13 billion for the current product, which is still quite a big gap. Zhang Yutai said.
Overall, AI is transforming the automotive industry, and generative AI is enabling a new generation of immersive in-cabin experiences in terms of human-machine interaction, driver experience, in-car entertainment services, and productivity benefits. For automakers, finding an all-round partner with deep accumulation in AI, automotive, chip semiconductors and other fields is a demanding but unobtrusive choice. MediaTek has shown such potential, as Yourenjie said in an interview, MediaTek has nearly 10 years of experience in the automotive field, and the global market shipment of Dimensity automotive cockpit platform has exceeded 20 million sets. Therefore, we can also expect MediaTek to play a more important role in the era of software-defined vehicles and AI-defined vehicles in the future.