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The driverless car dream is becoming more of a reality with Softbank’s British chip-making giant, ARM, launching an autonomous-class processor that combines performance and high-integrity safety features in vehicles.
According to the chip-makers, the new Automotive Enhanced (AE) line allows them to add security elements that will enable self-sufficient cars to meet the toughest safety requirements and its first processor is called the Cortex-A76AE.
“Safety is the highest priority for carmakers we talk with, for both the obvious technology factors associated with autonomous systems controlling all aspects of driving, but also to ensure that human passengers can trust their automated driver,” said Lakshmi Mandyam, vice president of ARM’s automotive business in a blog post written by London-based journalist, Malek Murison.
“If consumers don’t trust that the autonomous systems in their cars are safe, then mass market acceptance of this technology will be slow to happen.”
The autonomous driving applications will run everything from car brakes and steering to collision detection and vehicle entertainment systems.
The Cortex AE chip is built with seven-nanometer circuit wiring, giving it more space for extra features while operating with a fraction of the energy of other chips that are powering driverless-car prototypes.
The Split-Lock concept, for example, will provide greater flexibility than previous lock-step CPU implementations and can be configured into a ‘Split mode’, to offer higher performance or ‘lock mode’ for less error-prone processing.
It is estimated that ARM-based chips are being used in 85 per cent of car entertainment systems worldwide and almost two-thirds of collision-detection processors.
The software company expanded its reach to autonomous driving applications alongside its domination of the smartphone chip market after being acquired by Japan’s Softbank in 2016. It expects the first cars using the processor to hit the roads in 2020.
