STMicroelectronics’ most recent collaborations are strong indicators that the Geneva-based semiconductor manufacturer intends to become a dominant supplier of electronics for Connected Vehicles (CVs) and Autonomous Vehicles (AVs). Late last week, the company announced a partnership with Mobileye to develop a 5th-generation sensor-fusion processor and a “V2X-Enhanced GNSS” chip set that is being jointly-developed with Israel-based Autotalks.
Mobileye’s 5th-Gen Sensor Fusion Processor
Mobileye says that its EyeQ5’s proprietary accelerator cores are optimized for a wide variety of computer-vision, signal-processing, and machine-learning tasks, including deep neural networks. The EyeQ5 processor features heterogeneous, fully programmable accelerators, with each of the four accelerator types in the chip optimized for its own family of algorithms. This diversity of accelerator architectures enables applications to save both computational time and energy by using the most suitable core for every task. This optimized assignment ensures the EyeQ5 provides “super-computer” capabilities within a low-power envelope to enable price-efficient passive cooling. Mobileye’s investment in several programmable domain-specific accelerator families is enabled by its focus on the ADAS and autonomous-driving markets.
Mobileye has built the EyeQ5’s security defenses based on the integrated Hardware Security Module. This enables system integrators to support over-the-air software updates, secure in-vehicle communication, etc. The root of trust is created based on a secure boot from an encrypted storage device.
Autonomous driving requires fusion processing of dozens of sensors, including high-resolution cameras, radars, and LiDARs. The sensor-fusion process has to simultaneously grab and process all the sensors’ data. For this purpose, the EyeQ5’s dedicated IOs support at least 40Gbps data bandwidth.
The EyeQ5 processor implements two PCIe Gen4 ports for inter-processor communication, which could enable system expansion with multiple EyeQ5 devices or for connectivity with an application processor. High computational and data bandwidth requirements are supported with four 32-bit LPDDR4 channels, operating at 4267MT/s.
EyeQ5 is expected to be delivered to carmakers and Tier1s along with a full suite of hardware accelerated algorithms and applications that are required for autonomous driving. Along with this, Mobileye will support an automotive-grade standard operating system and provide a complete software development kit (SDK) to allow customers to differentiate their solutions by deploying their algorithms on EyeQ5. The SDK may also be used for prototyping and deployment of Neural Networks, and for access to Mobileye pre-trained network layers. Uses of EyeQ5 as an Open Software Platform are facilitated by such architectural elements as hardware virtualization and full cache coherency between CPUs and accelerators.
Engineering samples of EyeQ5 are expected to be available by first half of 2018. First development hardware with the full suite of applications and SDK are expected by the second half of 2018.
Autotalks’ V2X-Enhanced Positioning Technology
STM and Autotalks announced a joint project to develop a “V2X-Enhanced GNSS” technology which provides highly-accurate, reliable, authenticated and secure vehicle localization and positioning information, even in challenging environments such as urban canyons, tunnels, parking structures and other places where GPS alone works poorly, if at all. Paradoxically, these are the very places where accurate absolute and relative positioning (to other vehicles and infrastructure) is critical in progress toward semi- and fully-autonomous vehicles.
V2X ranging between vehicles and roadside infrastructure provides an additional level of absolute accuracy beyond that offered by GNSS, which can vary significantly because of atmospheric signal interference, the number and angle of constellation satellites in view, multi-path reflection, antenna configuration, and other factors. US government data suggest that a high-quality Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Standard Positioning Service (SPS) receiver provides better than 3.5 meters (11.5 feet) horizontal accuracy. Connection of GNSS with a secure V2X chipset, and fusion of the two technologies, GNSS and V2X ranging, offer a trusted positioning reference, in which vehicle localization is authenticated and secure, as well as the link between GNSS and the V2X chipset.
Autotalks’ and ST assert that their joint development of V2X-Enhanced GNSS builds on the companies’ existing successes in co-developing a world-class V2X chipset that connects vehicles to other vehicles and infrastructure within wireless range for safety and mobility applications. “Autotalks fully recognizes that autonomous driving requires equal measures of reliability, accuracy, and security and no driver would sacrifice any of these,” said Hagai Zyss, CEO of Autotalks.
“To fully realize the safety, convenience, and other benefits of autonomous driving, we need confidence in the security, reliability, and accuracy of the communications between our vehicle and its surroundings to know precisely how close we are to things, whether—and in what direction—they are moving, and what they are telling us—such as when there are roadworks or an accident ahead,” said Antonio Radaelli, Director, Infotainment, Automotive Digital Division, STMicroelectronics. “Building upon our successful collaboration with Autotalks, we are combining ST’s state-of-the-art positioning technology and roadmap for high-precision Automotive GNSS supporting satellite signal authentication with Autotalks’ expertise in advanced signal-processing algorithms for ranging, to smoothly pave the road to secure, accurate, and reliable V2X-Enhanced GNSS.”
Field trials in an Asian country, monitored by a government agency, are being used to test this technology in 2016.