Chipmakers reveal new partners at trade show

As the automotive market requires more high-performance chips for intelligent cockpits and autonomous driving, chipmakers yielded brilliant results at this year's Consumer Electronics Show, launching competitive technologies and a series of partnerships with carmakers.

The United States-based chipmaker Nvidia released the eighth-generation autonomous driving platform Drive Hyperion at this year's CES. It is designed with Nvidia Drive Orin system-on-a-chip, a central computer for software-defined vehicles, that can improve and create a wide variety of new software and service-based business models for carmakers.

The Drive Hyperion 8 platform includes 12 state-of-the-art cameras, 12 ultrasonics, three interior cameras, and one front-facing lidar. Nvidia's new scaling partners will help make it possible for the platform to start production as early as this year.

The company also highlighted a number of new energy vehicle makers adopting the Hyperion platform, including Polestar, Li Auto, Nio, R Auto and Xpeng.

The joint venture of Chinese IT company Baidu and carmaker Geely－Jidu Automotive－will feature the Nvidia Drive Orin chip on its first production model. This vehicle with Level 4 autonomous driving will be unveiled at the Beijing auto show in April. Mass production and delivery are planned for 2023.

Nvidia underlined the importance of China's dynamic NEV industry for its expansion at this year's CES. It said it is targeting $8 billion in revenue from auto businesses over the next six years.

Mobileye, Intel's autonomous driving hardware and software arm, unveiled its latest generation of self-driving car system-on-a-chip at the CES.

Named EyeQ Ultra, it is designed to deliver power and performance for autonomous vehicles with the first chips expected by the end of 2023 and full automotive-grade production by 2025.

In addition, Mobileye signed deals with Geely's electric arm Zeekr to build an NEV with Level 4 autonomous driving. It will feature the newly-released chip and Mobileye mapping data with its debut expected by 2024 in China.

Also, the company announced it is to cooperate with Volkswagen for the first time to apply Mobileye's mapping data to enhance Advanced Driver Assistance System features. Ford extended its collaboration with Mobileye to begin using its road experience management technology in future versions of its hands-free driving system Blue-Cruise.

Another chip giant, Qualcomm, which has been supplying semiconductors to the automotive industry for two decades, released a series of new partnerships. It underlines the company's push into the automotive chip market at the CES.

Qualcomm announced agreements to provide components based on the company's Snapdragon processors for automakers Honda, Volvo and Renault for digital cockpits.

Other automakers leveraging various parts of its Snapdragon Digital Chassis are Hyundai, Polestar and China's Nio, Xpeng, WM Motor, SAIC and Jidu.

Most automakers are shifting toward higher-powered processors and more centralized computer solutions, but they are not exclusively with one chip vendor.

For example, Jidu is using the Nvidia Orin for autonomous driving and Qualcomm for digital cockpits. As do many other carmakers.