Frontier News | Amid the popularization of intelligent driving, AXERA Tech launches global products, and Black Sesame Technologies unveils its high-computing-power 2000 chip.
The growth of computing power and integration are the two major trends in the development of the chip industry, which are vividly reflected in the new products showcased by AXERA and Black Sesame Technologies.
At this year's Shanghai Auto Show, AXERA launched its new generation of automotive chip products - the M57 series. Black Sesame Technologies mainly showcased the Huashan A2000 chip family and launched a secure and intelligent base built on the Wudang series of chips. The new products of both companies meet the automotive industry's demand for high computing power and computing power centralization in automotive chips.
The AXERA M57 series launched by AXERA has higher computing power compared to its previous - generation products, reaching 10 TOPS. It supports mixed - precision and the BEV algorithm.
Even at a junction temperature of 125 degrees, the power consumption of the M57 does not exceed 3.5W. This means that this chip is suitable not only for fuel - powered vehicles but also for electric vehicles that require energy conservation.
AXERA's self - developed image processing technology, AXERA AI - ISP, can generate high - definition images under various extreme lighting conditions, helping the in - vehicle system make more accurate decisions and thus optimizing the assisted driving in - vehicle scenarios.
The safety island with an integrated MCU can achieve ASIL - B and ASIL - D levels of functional safety at the chip level, ensuring that the assisted driving system will not have accidents due to individual functional failures.
Benefiting from AXERA's previous mass - production experience, the M57 can be applied immediately after its launch and can be paired with a variety of assisted driving solutions. It supports both the 5R5V integrated parking and driving domain control solution and the more cost - effective solution with 2 - megapixel cameras. Currently, the first mass - production vehicle model based on the M57 chip is under targeted development and is about to enter the European market.
The Huashan A2000 family of chips from Black Sesame Technologies is built on a 7nm automotive - grade process. Its computing power is said to reach up to "four times that of current mainstream flagship chips". The Huashan A2000 family includes three products: A2000 Lite, A2000, and A2000 Pro. Among them, the A2000 Lite focuses on urban assisted driving, the A2000 focuses on full - scenario general assisted driving, and the A2000 Pro is designed for high - level full - scenario general assisted driving.
The Huashan A2000 family of chips not only has powerful computing power but also fast operating speed.
To improve the chip's computing speed, Black Sesame Technologies has self - developed the "Jiushao" NPU architecture. This architecture supports Transformer hardware acceleration to meet the real - time inference requirements of large models. At the same time, it supports FP8/FP16 mixed - precision operations, improving the efficiency of multi - task parallel processing. In addition, through a priority preemption mechanism, it ensures that the chip has sufficient computing resources to respond to high - priority tasks, thereby enhancing the safety of high - level assisted driving in complex scenarios.
In addition to the Huashan series of chips, Black Sesame Technologies also has the Wudang series of chips, which is the industry's first cross - domain fusion computing chip. On the first day of the Shanghai Auto Show, Black Sesame Technologies launched a secure and intelligent base built on the Wudang series of chips.
The principle of this technology to improve vehicle safety is to ensure the independent operation of key systems such as the intelligent cockpit, assisted driving, and vehicle body control, so that the failure of a single system will not spread into a serious safety accident.
In addition, through multi - chip parallel connection, the computing power can be modularly upgraded. Therefore, this technology can cover all the computing power requirements of automotive companies from entry - level to flagship models. The hierarchical architecture of "stable base + expandable computing power" can help automotive companies reduce the cost of repeated development during platform iteration.
Also exhibited on the same day was the Wudang C1296 chip. This chip uses a 7nm process and integrates the three domains of the intelligent cockpit, assisted driving, and vehicle body control at the hardware level, enabling real - time data exchange between them. This solution has been installed in several new models under Dongfeng, and mass production is expected to be achieved in 2025.