Samsung has announced that it is teaming up with Ambarella to bring new levels of artificial intelligence (AI) processing to its next gen autonomous driving vehicle safety systems. Samsung will provide its 5nm process to Ambarella for its newly announced CV3-AD685 automotive AI central domain controller which will be deployed for the purpose of advanced driver-assistance system (ADAS).
Ambarella President and CEO, Fermi Wang, said:
“Ambarella and Samsung Foundry have a rich history of collaboration, and we are excited to bring their world-class 5nm technology to our new CV3-AD685 SoCs. Samsung’s proven automotive process technology allows us to bring new levels of AI acceleration, systems integration and power efficiency to ADAS and L2+ through L4 autonomous vehicles."
The domain controller chip is designed and developed by Ambarella to enable assisted and automated mobility in self-driving vehicles. The chip integrates Ambarella's CVflow AI engine that has a 20 times faster neural network processing capability than its predecessor, the CV2 SoC. The new features with this chip also includes performance enhancement that can support full autonomous driving (AD) stack processing, computer vision, 4D image radar, deep sensor fusion, and path planning.
Sang-Pil Sim, Executive Vice President and Head of Foundry Corporate Planning at Samsung Electronics, said:
"Samsung brings 5nm EUV FinFET technology to automotive applications for unprecedented ADAS and vision processor performance. With Tier-1 automotive suppliers already adopting the technology, we believe other automotive companies will also consider using the Ambarella CV3-AD SoC product family manufactured in Samsung’s 5nm process.”
Samsung's 5nm process technology offers tight process controls for reliability and traceability. The process is backed by the Samsung Advanced Foundry (SAFE) program, that provides a comprehensive ecosystem between the Samsung Foundry, partners and customers that facilitates the design and delivery of SoC designs. It also includes key design components such as Process Design Kits (PDK), reference flows, Intellectual Properties (IP), and design support.
With the SAFE program, Samsung has a good track record for its automotive foundry process and its expertise will help Ambarella to enable robust autonomous driving features in the near future.