The road to fully autonomous driving

Mobileye and STMicroelectronics are co-developing the fifth generation of the former’s SoC, the EyeQ5, to act as the central computer performing sensor fusion for fully autonomous driving (FAD) vehicles starting in 2020.

To meet power consumption and performance targets, the EyeQ5 will be designed in a 10 nm or below FinFET technology node and will feature eight multithreaded CPU cores coupled with 18 cores of Mobileye’s vision processors. These enhancements will increase performance eight times over the current fourth-generation EyeQ4. The product will also produce more than 12 Tera operations per second, while keeping power consumption below 5 W, to maintain passive cooling at high performance.

The EyeQ5’s accelerator cores are optimised for a wide variety of computer-vision, signal-processing and machine-learning tasks, including deep neural networks. The device features heterogeneous, fully programmable accelerators, with each of the four accelerator types in the chip optimised for its own family of algorithms. Its dedicated IOs support at least 40 Gbps data bandwidth, while high computational and data bandwidth requirements are supported with four 32-bit LPDDR4 channels operating at 4267 MT/s.

Leveraging its experience in automotive-grade designs, ST will support physical implementation, specific memory and high-speed interfaces, and system-in-package design to ensure the EyeQ5 meets the full qualification process aligned with the highest automotive standards. The company will also contribute to the overall safety- and security-related architecture of the product.

“EyeQ5 is designed to serve as the central processor for future fully autonomous driving for both the sheer computing density, which can handle around 20 high-resolution sensors, and for increased functional safety,” said Professor Amnon Shashua, co-founder, CTO and chairman of Mobileye.

“Each generation of the EyeQ technology has proven its value to drivers and ST has proven its value to Mobileye as a manufacturing, design and R&D partner since beginning our cooperation on the EyeQ1,” said Marco Monti, executive vice president and general manager Automotive and Discrete Group, STMicroelectronics. “With our joint commitment to the fifth generation of the industry’s leading advanced driver assistance system (ADAS) technology, ST will continue to provide a safer, more convenient smart driving experience.”

The EyeQ5 will 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 users to differentiate their solutions by deploying their algorithms on EyeQ5.

Engineering samples of the EyeQ5 are expected to be available by first half of 2018. First development hardware with the full suite of applications and the SDK are expected by the second half of 2018.