Up to 280 tops, Black Sesame Technology released Huashan II, PK Tesla FSD.

As the core "brain" of smart cars, chips have become the key layout areas of many car companies, Tier 1 and autonomous driving companies.

Around the most critical computing unit of autonomous driving, many innovative companies of autonomous driving chips have been born in China. At a time when most of the market share in this field is still controlled by foreign manufacturers, they are striving to become the "light of domestic autonomous driving chips".

Black Sesame Intelligent Technology, founded on 20 16, is a strong contender for this title.

Following the release of its first self-driving chip-Huashan No.1 (HS- 1)A500 at the end of August 20 19, Black Sesame launched a brand-new series of products-Huashan No.2 (HS-2) in June this year. The launch of the two series of products is only more than 300 days apart, and the overall R&D efficiency can be seen.

1, the self-cultivation of the domestic autopilot chip with the highest computing power

Huashan II series autopilot chips currently have two models, including:

Apply? L3/L4？ Huashan No.2 A 1000 with self-driving class? ; Objection? ADAS/L2.5？ Automatic driving Huashan II A 1000L.

A simple understanding is that A 1000 is a high-performance version, while A 1000L is a performance cutting.

This product model setting also enables Huashan II series chips to be integrated in different autopilot application scenarios.

Compared with A500 chip, A 1000? Have you improved your computing ability? Eight times. Did you reach it? 40-70 times, what is the corresponding power consumption? 8W, the energy efficiency ratio exceeds? 6TOPS/W, this data indicator is currently in a leading position in the world.

Huashan II A 1000 has such excellent energy efficiency performance, largely because this chip is based on the multi-layer heterogeneity of black sesame? TOA architecture

The architecture organically combines image sensing technology, image and video compression coding technology, computer vision processing technology and deep learning technology.

In addition, this chip has a high-performance image processing core developed by Black Sesame? NeuralIQ ISP？ And the neural network acceleration engine? DynamAI DL？ It also provided a lot of help for its energy efficiency jump.

It should be noted that the calculated force value here is floating because the calculation method is different.

If only the computing power of A 1000 convolution array is calculated, A 1000 is roughly 40TOPS. If you add the computing power of CPU and GPU on the chip, its ultimate power will be achieved? 70 o'clock.

In terms of other parameters and characteristics, A 1000 has eight CPU cores, including DSP digital signal processing and hardware accelerator, which supports the access of mainstream autopilot sensors in the market, including lidar, millimeter-wave radar, 4K camera and GPS.

In addition, in order to meet the requirements of vehicle-road coordination and Che Yun coordination, the chip not only integrates PCIE high-speed interface, but also has Gigabit Ethernet interface of vehicle specifications.

A 1000 has been moving towards the goal of vehicle regulations since its design. It meets the reliability and durability level 2 standard of chip AEC-Q 100, and the whole chip reaches the ASIL-B level of ISO 26262. There is also a safety island inside the chip, which meets the ASIL D standard. What is the functional safety level of the whole chip system? ASIL D.C.

From these characteristics, A 1000 is a very standard automotive chip, which can fully meet the requirements of vehicle terminal in various environments.

A 1000 chip was completed in April this year, using TSMC 16nm FinFET process.

In June this year, the R&D team of Black Sesame has tested the performance of all modules of the chip and passed the debugging completely. The next step is to conduct joint testing with customers to prepare for the final mass production.

It is reported that the first model equipped with this chip will be in? 202 1 mass production at the end of the year.

With the introduction of A 1000 and A 1000L, the road map of self-driving chip products of black sesame becomes clearer.

After Huashan II, the company plans to launch Huashan III at some point in 202 1, mainly targeting at L4/L5 autopilot platform. The computing power of the chip will exceed 200TOPS, and more advanced 7nm process technology will be adopted.

Huashan No.3? 200 times The computing power will be equal to that of NVIDIA Orin chip.

Last August, it was released together with Huashan No.1 A500 chip, and the FAD (fully automatic driving) autopilot computing platform developed by Black Sesame.

Today, this platform is based on A 1000 and A 1000L chips, which has stronger expansibility and wider application scenarios.

For low-level ADAS scenarios, customers can build a computing platform based on HS-2 A 1000L chips, with computing power of 16TOPS and power consumption of 5W.

For the high-grade L4 autopilot, customers can connect four HS-2 A 1000 chips in parallel to realize a computing platform with a computing power of up to 280TOPS.

Of course, the combination of these chips can be changed according to the needs of different customers.

Like most other manufacturers of self-driving chips, Black Sesame has also invested more R&D efforts in scalable and flexible computing platforms to meet customers' needs for computing platforms to a greater extent.

In turn, this method also gives chip manufacturers like Black Sesame the opportunity to reach out to more potential customers.

According to the plan of Black Sesame Intelligent Technology, the core development board based on A 1000 will be provided to customers in July this year.

By September this year, they will also launch the Domain Controller (DCU) of L3 Autopilot, which integrates two A 1000 chips and has a computing power of 140TOPS.

2. Black Sesame Autopilot Chip Product "Bible"

With the release of Huashan II series chips, Shan, founder and CEO of Black Sesame Intelligent Technology, also elaborated the company's "AI Cube" product development strategy in 2020, including "understanding, seeing clearly and seeing far".

This strategy is based on many requirements for autopilot controllers and computing platforms in the market, including safety, reliability, ease of use, openness, upgradeability and continuity.

Among them, what does direct understanding mean? AI technical ability requires that the chip products of black sesame can understand all external information and make judgments and decisions.

The basis of understanding is to see clearly, which refers to the image processing ability of black sesame chip products and the ability to receive external information accurately.

Here, especially the camera sensor with the largest amount of information and data is indispensable.

Seeing far means that vehicles should not only perceive the surrounding environment, but also know more extensive environmental information, which involves the interconnection technologies such as vehicle-road coordination and Che Yun coordination, so we see that the chip products of Black Sesame pay great attention to the support of interconnection technologies.

As a developer of autonomous driving chips, this strategy will become the "Bible" for the follow-up chip product development of Black Sesame.

3. Locate Tier 2, bind Tier 1, and serve OEM.

At this stage, the development of smart cars has become a national will. With such policy support, the market outbreak of smart cars is just around the corner.

According to the report data of iResearch, there will be 66.62 million smart cars in the world by 2025, and the conservative estimate of smart cars in China market is around160,000.

Such a large-scale incremental market for smart cars will foster unlimited opportunities for chip suppliers to build the "brain" of smart cars.

As one of them, black sesame intelligent technology will also be integrated into this trend, and it has a good chance to grow into a trend leader.

As a developer of autonomous driving chips, Black Sesame Intelligent Technology has positioned itself as? In the future, Tier 2 will bind Tier 1 partners to provide products and services for car companies.

Of course, black sesame can not only provide on-board chips, but also provide customers with solutions for autonomous driving sensors and algorithms, as well as tools chains, operating platforms and other products.

With the previously released Huashan No.1 A500 chip, Black Sesame Intelligent Technology has reached in-depth cooperation with China FAW and Zhongke Chuangda, and will carry out a number of projects in the fields of autonomous driving chips and visual perception algorithms.

In addition, Bosch, the world's top supplier, has also established a strategic cooperative relationship with Black Sesame.

At present, the Huashan No.1 A500 chip of Black Sesame has started mass production, and its projects with domestic head car companies on L2+ and L3-level automatic driving are also under way.

Such a rapid landing process can be expected in the future.

Interestingly, Black Sesame released Huashan II series chips this time, and many industry leaders, including Wang Guoqiang, deputy general manager of China FAW Group, Zu Sijie, chief engineer of SAIC, Li Bin, CEO of Weilai Automobile, and Chen Yudong, president of Bosch China, all made platforms for its cloud platform.

What does this mean? This leaves us a lot of room for imagination.

This article comes from car home, the author of the car manufacturer, and does not represent car home's position.