Qualcomm Expecting To “Flex” It’s Automotive Muscles In 2024

Virtually precisely one 12 months in the past at CES 2023, Qualcomm introduced its Snapdragon Experience Flex system-on-chip (SoC) product household. As an growth of the corporate’s Snapdragon Digital Chassis product portfolio, the brand new SoC household is supposed to assist superior driver help techniques (ADAS) in addition to digital cockpit and infotainment purposes spanning from entry stage to premium automobiles. On the time, Qualcomm introduced that the Experience Flex SoC was sampling with an anticipated begin of manufacturing in early 2024. It’s now early 2024 and CES is about to kick off once more. Tirias Analysis is anticipating to listen to an replace on the product household subsequent week. We anticipate the replace will embody, on the very least, among the companions who might be bringing the Experience Flex SoCs to market in manufacturing volumes this 12 months and into 2025. Given Qualcomm’s monitor file for hitting their estimated timelines, we felt {that a} re-cap of the product household is warranted main as much as subsequent week’s anticipated replace.

“Flex-ing” Assets to Assist Blended Criticality and A number of Tiers

The Snapdragon Experience Flex is definitely two monolithically built-in 4nm SoCs – a main SoC and what Qualcomm are calling a Security Island SoC. The first SoC consists of a Kryo Gen 6 Arm v8.2 central processing unit (CPU) with built-in L3 cache, an Adreno 663 graphics processing unit (GPU), a Hexagon neural processing unit (NPU), a Spectra 690 picture sign processing (ISP), two Adreno show processing items (DPUs) for a number of high-resolution show assist and related reminiscence and I/O interconnects. This a part of the SoC is Automotive Security Integrity Degree (ASIL) B licensed. The Security Island SoC, which is ASIL-D licensed, consists of a multi-core real-time CPU with enhanced error managements assist and remoted reminiscence and peripherals. ASIL is a danger classification methodology established beneath ISO 26262 from the Worldwide Group for Standardization which defines purposeful security for highway automobiles. There are 4 ranges outlined from A-D with D denoting the very best security integrity stage. The Security Island SoC can work independently or in a lockstep mode with the first SoC. This versatile method permits the Experience Flex SoCs to handle its main mission of supporting mixed-criticality workloads with one chip – workloads with various ranges of security vital classifications akin to ADAS, digital cockpit and infotainment. The power to do that on one chip helps Tier 1 and automotive OEM companions to avoid wasting on value, board area and decrease cabling necessities.

Being an extension of the corporate’s Digital Chassis portfolio, the Experience Flex SoCs have been optimized with the Snapdragon Experience Imaginative and prescient software program stack. This optimization between the {hardware} and the software program is crucial to assist varied ranges of safety-critical purposes in a single chip. With using two SoCs for ASIL B and ASIL D assist, the corporate was in a position to partition compute, reminiscence and I/O assets. As well as, Qualcomm additionally carried out spatial and temporal freedom from interference processing for these assets. ISO 26262 defines freedom from interference because the “absence of cascading failures between two or extra components that might result in the violation of a security requirement.” Extra particularly, spatial freedom from interference is the safety of reminiscence assets for security and non-safety vital workloads achieved by way of {hardware} in addition to low-level software program. Temporal freedom from interference, alternatively, ensures that compute assets can be found when wanted by security vital purposes. This may be achieved by the partitioning of utility assets in addition to the prioritization of frequent assets just like the reminiscence controller for security vital purposes. Final is the implementation of system monitoring the place safety-critical purposes are able to self-measurement of key efficiency indicators (KPIs) and the monitoring software program is notified by the appliance if the required efficiency ranges can’t be met with the present assets.

One other issue that the Snapdragon Experience Flex household is addressing is scalability from entry-level to premium automobiles. Along with leveraging the Experience Imaginative and prescient software program stack, the product household additionally leverages frequent software program growth environments (SDE) and gear units. On the {hardware} entrance, Experience Flex SoCs can scale from 50 tera operations per second (TOPS) to assist fundamental security workloads akin to autonomous emergency braking to 2000 TOPS sooner or later to assist totally automated driving like robotaxis. In accordance with Qualcomm, all compute assets from the CPU, GPU and NPU scale accordingly primarily based on the workloads that should be supported. The frequent stack, SDE, toolsets and scalable {hardware} permits Tier 1 companions in addition to automotive OEMs to ship a cohesive consumer expertise throughout all car fashions. Moreover, saving on non-recurring engineering and growth prices, in addition they enable these companions to leverage their {hardware} and software program investments whereas simply enabling functionality customization as dictated by their product positioning methods.

On The Street to Software program Outlined Autos

The anticipated ramp to manufacturing volumes of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Experience Flex SoC comes at an auspicious time within the evolution of in-vehicle automotive infrastructures. Over the past 10-15 years, there was a proliferation of sensors in automobiles, an explosion within the quantity of information generated by these sensors and an exponential improve in compute assets required to course of that information. Because of this, the automotive trade is at the moment present process a paradigm shift from legacy de-centralized community topologies to centrally managed zonal architectures. This shift is facilitating a necessity for highly effective central compute techniques just like the Experience Flex SoC that are in flip enabling a transfer in direction of software program outlined automobiles or SDVs. Maybe the strongest indicator of the momentum behind this shift is the sturdy ecosystem of aggressive options which can be obtainable. Together with Qualcomm, Nvidia has their Drive Thor platform and Mobileye, their EyeQ platform.

The Snapdragon Experience Flex is promising the power to assist a number of ranges of security and non-safety vital purposes in a single chip in addition to scalability from entry stage to premium tiers. If it delivers on these guarantees, it’s going to have the potential to speed up the trade’s evolution to zonal structure and in the end to the SDV. Supporting a number of ranges of security vital purposes in addition to multi-tier scalability each assist with value per efficiency in addition to scalable reuse of funding that are required for any chance of mass market adoption. Waiting for CES kicking off subsequent week, automotive applied sciences are trying like they are going to be prominently featured. Together with bulletins from different firms like Nvidia and Mobileye round this subject, Tirias Analysis is anticipating main innovation and adoption information signaling the start of mass market central compute platform adoption and SDVs.