Bitauto OriginalCES's full name is the International Consumer Electronics Show. It is a grand gathering for technology fans every year. The latest one in 2022 CES was held as scheduled in Las Vegas, USA. Although it is a Consumer Electronics Show, judging from the momentum in the past two years, automotive technology has gradually become the mainstream and hot item of the show. More and more OEMs and technology companies will showcase their technological advantages and future cutting-edge concept products at this event. Even companies that were not previously related to cars will take advantage of the opportunity to stand out and show that they have not been eliminated by the times.

Of course, the three protagonists we are going to talk about today are three semiconductor companies that are giants in the traditional consumer electronics field. They are Qualcomm, Nvidia and Intel.

You may be familiar with Qualcomm because your Android phone is equipped with Qualcomm's Snapdragon chip, or the recently very popular smart cockpit chip "8155"; if you are familiar with Nvidia, you may be a fan of console games. Excellent performance graphics cards such as GeForce RTX 3080Ti allow you to race around in the virtual world; everyone from Intel is familiar with computer CPUs. Everyone knows i3/i5/i7, but today we will mention Mobileye, a subsidiary of Intel, which has also been deeply involved in the field of intelligent driving chips for a long time.

How do these three giants enter the automotive field today? What kind of outstanding products are you launching? Let's move on.

01 Qualcomm's "full house", Snapdragon digital chassis became the focus

At this CES, Qualcomm CEO An Meng showed us Qualcomm's layout and achievements in the automotive field. The most eye-catching It is a partner map that covers the entire PPT. There are as many as 37 world-leading car brands, such as the familiar Ford, BMW, Tesla, Honda, etc., as well as domestic brands such as Great Wall, NIO, and Geely. , BYD, etc. It was really a packed house. Since so many OEMs have joined Qualcomm’s circle of friends, it is natural that Qualcomm has the technology and a comprehensive product line for manufacturers with different needs to choose from.

This time Qualcomm brought their overall smart car solution - Snapdragon digital chassis.

The Snapdragon Digital Chassis is composed of a set of open and scalable cloud connection platforms, using a unified architecture to bring higher security and immersive digital experience, supporting Functional upgrades across a generation of cars throughout their lifecycle. Automakers can choose to adopt any or all platforms covered by Snapdragon Digital Chassis in their product lines and provide highly customized experiences for their products through continuous upgrades in the cloud. To put it simply, this digital chassis contains four major functional platforms: autonomous driving, smart cockpit, smart network connection and cloud services.

1. Snapdragon Ride platform

Snapdragon Ride is an open and programmable platform specially created by Qualcomm for autonomous driving, which can meet the L2+/L3 level demand for autonomous driving. Qualcomm has also recently announced a number of cooperation developments, including assisting General Motors in building Cadillac LYRIQ and assisting BMW in building its autonomous driving platform. At the same time, Qualcomm announced at the show that it is expanding its technology portfolio to respond to the changing needs of the autonomous driving field.

Qualcomm launched for the first time the Snapdragon Ride vision system, an open and scalable platform for autonomous driving. The system is based on a 4-nanometer process system-on-chip (SoC) and is designed to optimize Front-view and surround-view cameras are deployed to support driver assistance systems (ADAS) and autonomous driving (AD). The Snapdragon Ride vision system integrates a dedicated high-performance Snapdragon Ride SoC and Arriver's next-generation visual perception software stack. It is a combined software and hardware solution that provides multiple computing functions to enhance the perception of the vehicle's surrounding environment, support the vehicle's planning and execution, and assist Achieve a safer driving experience. The system is expected to be available with mass-produced cars in 2024.

2. Snapdragon Digital Cockpit Platform

At this CES show, Qualcomm announced its cooperation with Honda and Volvo, which is based on cockpit domain chips.

The Snapdragon Digital Cockpit Platform is currently in its fourth generation. This platform can help automakers seize the opportunity to transform the in-car experience and provide new services through highly customizable and always-connected SoCs and virtual reality. software solutions that create multi-display, multi-camera, advanced audio, video and multimedia experiences, and hybrid-critical environments that securely meet the needs of both consumers and the security ecosystem.

The 4th generation platform uses 6th generation Qualcomm Kryo CPU, Qualcomm Hexagon processor, multi-core Qualcomm AI engine, 6th generation Qualcomm Adreno GPU and Qualcomm Spectra ISP, new platform Features such as graphics, multimedia, computer vision and AI have been enhanced to support a situation-aware, optimized and adaptive cockpit system that can continuously evolve according to the preferences of drivers and passengers.

3. Snapdragon Automotive Connected Platform

This platform can help automakers create powerful LTE and 5G networking services, cellular car networking (C -V2X), Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and precise positioning capabilities, fully supporting secure connections between cars and the cloud, other vehicles and the surrounding environment, meeting the growing demand for a safer and more immersive driving experience.

4. Snapdragon car-to-cloud service

Through pre-integrated software and services designed for a new profit modelThe platform provides automobile manufacturers with flexible feature combinations, performance upgrades, and new functions. As mentioned earlier, car manufacturers can choose to adopt any or all platforms covered by Snapdragon Digital Chassis in their product lines and provide highly customized experiences for their products through continuous upgrades in the cloud. That is to say, automobile manufacturers can choose a certain module function or package all of them according to their own needs. Of course, they can all be upgraded in the cloud later. Such high flexibility has attracted the favor of a large number of manufacturers.

All in all, the Snapdragon Digital Chassis is a new platform that meets the needs of consumers and the automotive industry, and provides a new way of thinking to support the evolution of future automotive technology.

02 NVIDIA is deeply involved in the autonomous driving platform, and Hyperion 8 appears again

If Qualcomm is the leader in the field of smart cockpit chips, then NVIDIA has a higher status in the field of autonomous driving chips .

At this CES exhibition, NVIDIA announced that more companies will adopt its open DRIVE Hyperion platform, which includes high-performance computers and sensor architectures to meet the safety requirements of fully autonomous vehicles.

The latest generation of DRIVE Hyperion 8 uses redundant NVIDIA DRIVE Orin system-on-chip, 12 surround cameras, 9 radars, 12 ultrasonic modules, 1 front Built with lidar and 3 internal perception cameras.

This system has strong safety redundancy. Even if one computer or sensor fails, the backup equipment can ensure that the self-driving car takes passengers safely to their destination.

At present, this system has cooperated with many manufacturers, such as Volvo’s high-end brands Polestar, Weilai, Xpeng, Li Auto, R Auto and Zhiji Automobile have all adopted it DRIVE Hyperion. Additionally, driverless taxi services like Cruise, Zoox, and Didi, as well as trucking services like Volvo, Navistar, and Plus, are also using DRIVE Hyperion.

It is worth mentioning that two Chinese companies also announced during CES that they will be equipped with NVIDIA Orin chips. One is that Jidu’s first mass-produced model will be equipped with NVIDIA DRIVE Orin chips. Jidu’s mass-produced model is expected to be launched in 2023 and will become a car robot with L4 autonomous driving capabilities. At the same time, the concept car of this product is expected to be officially unveiled at the Beijing Auto Show in April this year.

Another company is self-driving truck company Tucson, which announced at CES that it will build a new platform based on NVIDIA DRIVE Orin chips. The computing power of a single Orin chip can reach 254TOPS, and the 7nm process is used. Currently, its performance is quite outstanding.

03 Intel’s MObileye launched three chips in a row to sound the clarion call for counterattack

There was a previous argument in the industry that Mobileye’s dominance was no longer due to the termination of many car companies in recent years. Instead of cooperating with it, it turned to companies such as Qualcomm, Nvidia and Huawei. Since 2016, Tesla has taken the lead in abandoning Mobileye and embarking on the road of self-research of chips. The FSD chip we are familiar with is the result of Tesla; subsequently Like the Ideal ONE also comes from Mobileye The EyeQ4 chip has been replaced by the domestic Horizon Journey 3 chip. What is even more damaging to Mobileye is that even BMW, its long-time partner, will invest in the Qualcomm Snapdragon Ride platform. A series of blows have caused the industry to have a negative attitude towards Mobileye. But at this CES show, Mobileye seemed to have launched a clarion call for counterattack, launching three new chips in succession, namely EyeQ Ultra, EyeQ 6L and EyeQ 6H.

EyeQ Ultra is a single-package autonomous vehicle integrated chip supercomputing platform built for end-to-end autonomous driving. The platform is built on the proven Mobileye EyeQ architecture and achieves an excellent performance of 176 TOPS by optimizing computing power and performance. Equivalent to the combined performance of 10 EyeQ 5 chips, this marks a huge leap forward for the EyeQ series of system integrated chips. With the 5nm process technology, EyeQ Ultra can meet all the needs and application scenarios of L4 autonomous driving, while avoiding the additional energy consumption and costs caused by combining multiple system integrated chips. This chip is expected to be available by the end of 2023 and fully achieve automotive-grade mass production in 2025.

EyeQ 6L and EyeQ 6H are the next generation EyeQ system integrated chips for advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS).

First of all, EyeQ 6L is the follow-up product of EyeQ 4, and its package size is only 55% of EyeQ 4. It means that higher computing power can be achieved with lower energy consumption. This chip focuses on L2-level assisted driving systems. Samples began last year and mass production is expected in mid-2023.

Another EyeQ 6H, it can realize high-end ADAS and partial autonomous driving functions through the configuration of a full surround-view camera. In terms of power, it is equivalent to two EyeQ 5. But more importantly, EyeQ 6H supports visualization, supports L2+ ADAS functions, multi-camera processing capabilities including parking cameras, and can support third-party applications such as visual parking and driver monitoring. This most advanced ADAS system integrated chip in the EyeQ series will begin sampling this year and is expected to be mass-produced by the end of 2024.

After talking about these new products, we might as wellLet’s look back at Mobileye’s chip evolution history:

--In September 2003, Mobileye released the EyeQ 1 chip.

This chip supports functions such as forward collision warning (FCW), lane departure warning (LDW) and traffic sign recognition.

--In 2008, Mobileye released its second chip: EyeQ 2.

This chip adds functions such as ACC and pedestrian detection emergency braking.

--From 2014 to 2018, Mobileye successively launched EyeQ 3 and EyeQ 4. Technical support for animal recognition, traffic light recognition and high-precision map-based technology finally made autonomous driving a qualitative leap.

--In 2020, Mobileye launched the EyeQ 5 chip.

--EyeQ Ultra, EyeQ 6L and EyeQ 6H launched in 2022.

To evaluate the performance of a chip, we need to introduce an indicator concept, which is the TOPS computing power indicator. 1TOPS means that the chip can perform 1 trillion operations per second, so the greater the value, the greater the computing power. The more powerful it is, the computing power of EyeQ 4 is 2.5 TOPS, EyeQ 5 reaches 24 TOPS, EyeQ Ultra reaches 176 TOPS, and currently Tesla’s FSD The computing power of HW3.0 is 144TOPS, NVIDIA’s Orin chip has reached 254TOPS, and Horizon Journey 5 has reached 128TOPS. Black Sesame’s Huashan No. 2 A1000Pro reaches 196 TOPS. Currently, everyone is racking their brains on how to improve computing power, but at the same time, one thing that cannot be ignored is that energy consumption is also very important. It would be irresponsible to talk about computing power without energy consumption.

This time Mobileye also disclosed the progress of cooperation at the CES show, and announced new cooperation with Volkswagen, Ford and Ji Krypton around Mobileye’s map, advanced driver assistance system (ADAS) and autonomous vehicle technology. Collaborative planning.

It is worth mentioning the cooperation with Jikrypton. Under the framework of Open EyeQ, the two parties will use 6 EyeQ5 system chips as the hardware basis to realize The efficient integration of JiKrypton’s proprietary software technology with Mobileye True Redundancy sensing solutions, Responsibility Sensitive Security System (RSS), and Road Network Collection Management (REM) technologies.

As Mobileye’s autonomous driving strategy continues to advance, the versatility and scalability of Mobileye’s product portfolio are beginning to emerge. Mobileye recently announced that the shipment volume of EyeQ system integrated chips (SoC) exceeded 100 million pieces, released mass-produced self-driving taxis, and announced that it will be launched in the United States, Europe and Asia, including the United States, Europe and Asia.A number of cities around the world have expanded their testing of self-driving cars. We also look forward to Mobileye continuing to maintain its high momentum, continue to compete with Qualcomm and Nvidia, and promote continued progress in the entire industry.

04 is written at the end

Through this CES exhibition, we have a clear understanding of the current pattern and disputes in the field of automotive chips. Qualcomm The three giant companies, Nvidia, and Intel, are constantly improving the performance, scalability and adaptability of their products. In today's era of interconnected everything and intelligence, any field The world is full of advanced technologies and diversified products, among which smart cars are quite popular. Whether it is smart cockpits inside the car or autonomous driving outside the car, they are inevitable trends in the future. Of course, various companies will squeeze out To seize this blue ocean, we look forward to more technology companies joining this competition, especially our Chinese technology companies to have a place in the future. Whether it is as small as a chip or as large as a sensing sensor or three electrical systems. The battle in the field of automotive technology has already begun, let us wait and see what the future situation will be like.