July 5 to 7, the 2023 China Auto Forum was held in Jiading, Shanghai. As a top event in the automotive industry, this forum with the theme of "New Era, New Mission, New Driving Force - Boosting the Construction of a Modern Industrial System" aims to gather forces from all parties, form a consensus on development, and contribute the wisdom and strength of the automotive industry to the construction of a modern industrial system.

At the themed forum of "Journey of Chips, Advancing Together" held on the afternoon of July 6, Gong Huimin, President of Automotive Product Business Unit of Axera, was invited to deliver a keynote speech, sharing the latest automotive chip products and application solutions, and interpreting Axera's business plan in the intelligent vehicle track.

Gong Huimin, President of Automotive Product Business Unit of Axera

Opportunities and Challenges Coexist in the Intelligent Driving Market, Axera Deeply Enters the Intelligent Vehicle Track

The China Auto Forum has always been a weather vane for the development of the automotive industry. Under the new situation where the automotive and chip industries are promoting each other and developing rapidly, a special chip-themed forum was set up at this conference, gathering government departments, industry experts and representatives of domestic and foreign enterprises to conduct in-depth discussions on the high-quality development path of the automotive semiconductor industry.

In his speech at the forum, Gong Huimin stated that in recent years, the Chinese automotive market has gradually grown into the world's largest single market, and Chinese local brands have also achieved considerable development. Behind this, the development of ADAS has played a significant role in boosting.

At the same time, various factors such as policies, technological maturity, cost and supply chain capabilities are also influencing the development direction of the intelligent driving market. At the policy level, the current regulations are still designed around traditional driving, and the large-scale implementation of high-level autonomous driving takes time; at the technical level, L2 has achieved large-scale application, but L2+, especially urban NOA technology, is still in the early stage of development. At the cost level, although the software and algorithms of intelligent driving systems are constantly iterating, the experience of individual users does not match the cost; at the supply chain level, the localization rate of SoC is less than 10% at present, and the reliability and long-term stable supply capacity need to be verified.

"Automakers are gradually returning to rationality, shifting from the original function-oriented to experience-oriented, and from technology-oriented to user-oriented." Gong Huimin pointed out that the trend of cost reduction and efficiency improvement in the industry is becoming increasingly obvious, and it is continuously transmitted to chip enterprises. Against this background, how to achieve differentiation of products and solutions, how to provide stable and reliable delivery, how to create extreme cost performance and do a good job in privacy protection and data desensitization have put forward higher requirements for chip enterprises.

Since its establishment in 2019, Axera has been committed to building world-leading artificial intelligence chips, and has achieved large-scale shipments in smart cities, AIoT and other fields. Entering a new stage from 1 to N, Axera actively embraces the wave of automotive intelligence and firmly chooses the intelligent vehicle track. Based on capabilities such as super performance advantages, cost control advantages, extreme power consumption control advantages and extreme image processing advantages, Axera will provide the industry with a full range of intelligent driving reference solutions for L0-L2, L2+ and L2++ levels, as well as other intelligent solutions such as CMS/DMS.

To meet the development needs of intelligent driving, Axera's automotive chips are continuously evolving. Gong Huimin introduced that Axera has completed the R&D of M55 and M76 series chips. Among them, the M55 series has been mass-produced and installed on vehicles in 2023, and can support L2-level ADAS and CMS solutions with ultra-high cost performance. The M76 series provides a high-performance NPU, realizing a single-chip parking and driving integrated domain control solution, replacing the existing multi-chip solutions on the market and creating value for customers. For L2+ and above intelligent driving, Axera will also launch higher-level intelligent driving chips one after another.

Supported by Core Technologies, Becoming a Long-term Value Provider in the Automotive Industry

Axera's automotive chips can support customers to build models with an ultimate driving and riding experience and provide long-term value for the automotive industry, which stems from Axera's two core technologies: Hybrid Precision NPU and Aixin Zhimou® AI-ISP.

Among them, the Hybrid Precision NPU has an efficient tensor core, a flexible vector core and a high-bandwidth data engine. Through the optimization of operator instruction set and the fully optimized pipeline and scheduling system, it ensures the high performance of the NPU. Test data shows that the NPU of Axera's automotive-grade chip M76H has outstanding performance, which not only provides super strong CNN performance, but also leads the industry when running the Swin Transformer model.

At the same time, Axera's Hybrid Precision NPU toolchain is efficient and easy to use, with prominent advantages such as complete toolchain functions, high PTQ quantization accuracy, rich operator support and mature and stable tools. Gong Huimin stated that the original mainstream network models can all run on Axera's NPU without the need for the CPU to supplement additional operators or modify the models, which can reduce customers' debugging investment and meet their mass production needs.

Aixin Zhimou® AI-ISP is an AI-ISP technology pioneered by Axera and the only one in the industry to achieve commercial mass production. By introducing AI into the traditional ISP, Aixin Zhimou® AI-ISP not only makes refined modeling of sensor characteristics and extreme optimization design of image processing strategies, but also makes full use of the data-driven characteristics of AI algorithms to obtain a higher-dimensional effect "boost", realizing a variety of functions such as AI black light full color, AI HDR imaging, AI anti-shake and AI scene enhancement, comprehensively improving video image quality and enhancing the performance in difficult intelligent driving scenarios such as night low light.

Tests show that in the tunnel exit scenario, Aixin Zhimou® AI-ISP can fully expand the dynamic range, ensure continuous perception and detection of lane lines and vehicles, and ensure driving safety; in the night scenario, Aixin Zhimou® AI-ISP can improve the brightness of dark scenes and fully suppress the highlight of rear vehicle lights, effectively presenting details such as the contour of target vehicles and road lane lines to guarantee driving safety.

At present, Axera has launched a number of automotive application-oriented solutions such as CMS electronic exterior mirror system, DMS&OMS two-in-one system, intelligent front view system and single-SoC parallel full-time parking and driving integrated system, bringing customers a good visual experience in intelligent driving scenarios. In terms of commercial implementation, Axera has achieved "mass production upon launch", its automotive chips have been mass-produced on two passenger car models, and multiple vehicle models will be fixed this year.

As a new engine for the electrification and intelligent development of the automotive industry, the high-quality development of automotive chips has become an important topic of common concern to all parties. Gong Huimin stated that Axera is dedicated to making chips, and its automotive business is positioned as Tier2. It will meet the diversified needs of manufacturers with efficient and easy-to-use toolchains, rich software development platforms and application-oriented reference designs, enabling Tier1 to quickly import mass production. Facing the new challenges of the intelligent era, Axera will also maintain an open attitude of cooperation and achieve win-win cooperation in the industrial chain.