- 14 months after unveiling its EyeQ4 automotive vision SoC - samples have been due to arrive this quarter, with mass-production expected to start in early 2018 - Mobileye (NYSE:MBLY) announces it's working with long-time partner STMicroelectronics (STM) to develop the EyeQ5 , an SoC it declares will "act as the central computer performing sensor fusion for Fully Autonomous Driving (FAD) vehicles starting in 2020."
- Whereas the EyeQ4 contains 4 CPU cores and 10 accelerator cores, the EyeQ4 sports 8 CPU cores and 18 accelerator cores. A 10nm-or-lower manufacturing process will be used. Mobileye asserts the EyeQ5 will deliver 8x the performance of the EyeQ4, while consuming less than 5W of power.
- Engineering samples are expected by 1H18. STMicro will handle the chip's physical implementation, memory, and interfaces, and also "contribute to the overall safety- and security-related architecture of the product."
- The announcement comes a day after rival NXP demoed its BlueBox autonomous driving platform. BlueBox pairs a "computing engine" with radar, lidar, vision sensors, and software. Nvidia unveiled its Drive PX2 processing module for self-driving cars in January.