Black Sesame Intelligence launches the first chip in the Wudang series using a 7nm process, enabling a single SoC to 'make big use of small materials'

About 3-4 years ago, Black Sesame Intelligence re-examined its strategic direction and launched the research and development of a new series of products 2 years ago. Now, this product has finally been released, which is the first chip product of the Wudang series - the C1200 smart car cross-domain computing chip platform. From this product, it is not difficult to see that Black Sesame Intelligence’s prediction that year was that intelligent driving would become standard equipment, the electronic and electrical architecture would evolve towards a centralized system, and the demand for cost-effectiveness would become increasingly stringent.

At a press conference on April 7, Shan Jizhang, the founder and CEO of Black Sesame Intelligence, announced that the release of C1200 marked the company’s strategic positioning. Convert from autonomous driving computing chips to smart car computing chips. In an unprecedentedly fierce price war, Black Sesame Intelligence wants to use its cross-domain computing chip platform to demonstrate its ability to "save" and even "open up" the cost of smart cars.

What needs to be rewritten is: "Three-step" strategy

Continuous expansion of product lines

"Unprecedented In the fierce competition, we welcome all business partners to compete and cooperate openly. Only in this way can China's intelligent driving industry develop healthily," Shan Jizhang said, in order to build full-stack technical capabilities and create a better environment. Ecologically, Black Sesame Intelligence has formulated a "three-step" strategic plan while adhering to its Tier2 role:

• The first step is to focus on autonomous driving computing chips and solutions to realize product The commercialization of the vehicle has been implemented to form a complete technology closed loop;

• According to the development trend of automotive electronic and electrical architecture, the second step is to expand the product line to cover more computing nodes in the car, forming Combination of multiple product lines

• The third step is to continuously expand the product line to cover the needs of more cars and provide customers with a variety of automotive software and hardware solutions and services based on our chips.

Black Sesame Intelligence’s product line currently covers two important areas: autonomous driving and cross-domain computing. The first is the Huashan series of products for autonomous driving scenarios. The A1000 chip can support the latest BEV algorithm and meet the needs of L3 and below autonomous driving scenarios. The second is the Wudang series of products for cross-domain computing scenarios, which can meet the needs of different domains such as smart car cockpits and smart driving, and have the ability to integrate multiple domains

The "cost reduction capability" has become the two major products The competitive advantage of line-focused products. Shan Jizhang said that the price competition in the new energy vehicle industry this year is fierce, and cost pressure is transmitted to the entire supply chain. Reasonable computing power and high cost performance have become the mainstream of the autonomous driving market.

Currently, Black Sesame Intelligence has completed a number of technological innovations focusing on cost reduction and efficiency improvement, including car-grade neural network technology that achieves twice the cost performance of similar products in the industry, which can improve chip yield while reducing Low-cost packaging technology, new automotive-grade computing chip architecture systems that can maximize chip performance, etc.

Black Sesame Intelligence released a parking and parking integrated smart driving domain control solution at last week’s Electric Vehicle 100-person Conference, which supports 10V (camera) NOA function, and the cost is controlled within 3,000 yuan, and it also supports physical computing power of more than 1,000TOPS

Cross-domain computing platform "Wudang"

Four major " "Moves" Inventory

"Judging from the computing requirements of a smart car, its computing power types are divided into seven categories: general CPU, AI neural network processing, image rendering, dedicated CV calculation, audio Sound effect processing and efficient and secure real-time computing power."

Ding Ding, Vice President of Black Sesame Intelligent Products, said that the extremely fast data exchange infrastructure (ESDE) independently developed by Black Sesame Intelligent can support seven different computing capabilities. , and can manage the corresponding data efficiently and flexibly, thereby providing a computing platform with better performance, higher cost performance, and higher integration for the new generation of electronic and electrical architecture

Specifically, first, the ESDE architecture can safely isolate computing power combinations required by different functional safety levels. Secondly, it can process and transmit large traffic data with low latency to make full use of computing power, making the computing power specifications more than just decorations. The Wudang series product line launched by Black Sesame Intelligence this time is based on Created by ESDE, "new, accurate, strong and high" are its four highlight "moves".

• First of all, the Wudang series adopts an innovative fusion architecture, using heterogeneous isolation technology to match and combine different computing power according to different scenarios, specifications and security requirements to support the flexible development of automotive electronic and electrical architecture

• Secondly, this product line targets the L2-level intelligent driving and converged computing application market. Only one SoC can provide human-computer interaction, driving and parking integration, and data exchange. Capability

• The third is the powerful family design, which is based on advanced technology to ensure that the product can respond to different computing needs, meet the needs of various scenarios through a set of SDKs, and at the same time make the development tools into a family

• Black Sesame Intelligence’s third-generation automotive-grade SoC provides effective protection in terms of security, and has been successfully tape-outed in one go. It is understood that the Wudang series platform has greatly optimized the previous generation design, which not only significantly improves performance, but also has ASIL-D Safety capabilities and Security capabilities for regional markets around the world

Single chip supports multiple scenarios

"It's not about throttling, but about open source"

The C1200 based on the 7nm process is the first in the Wudang series. A chip that uses the automotive-grade high-performance CPU core A78AE (performance up to 150KDMIPS) that supports lockstep and the automotive-grade high-performance GPU core G78AE to provide powerful general-purpose computing and general-purpose rendering computing power.

Moreover, the chip has built-in mature and high-performance Audio DSP module and a new generation of self-developed NeuralIQ ISP module that can process 1.5G pixels online per second, providing the industry's highest MCU of 32KDIPMS. Computing power, it can process the input of more than 12 high-definition cameras at the same time, and supports high-speed MIPI.

In terms of peripherals, C1200 supports processing the access and forwarding of multi-channel CAN data, supports Ethernet interfaces and supports all commonly used display interface formats, supports multi-screen output, multi-channel 4K capabilities; supports dual-channel LPDDR5 memory particles can meet the bandwidth needs after cross-domain convergence.

At the same time, C1200 has a built-in Security module that supports ASIL-D level Safety Island and national security level two and EVITA full, and meets the highest reliability requirements for vehicle safety levels.

Specifically in terms of application, the C1200 chip is a cost-effective computing platform that can be widely used in CMS (electronic rearview mirror) systems, integrated parking and parking systems, and complete vehicles. Computing scenarios in multiple fields such as computing, infotainment systems, smart headlights, and cabin perception systems

In addition, C1200 also implements hard-isolated independent computing subsystems, independent rendering and independent display functions to meet the needs of instrumentation Control panels require high security and fast startup. At the same time, it can also be flexibly applied to computing scenarios that require an independent system such as autonomous driving and HUD head-up display

"The greater role Wudang C1200 brings to car companies is not to reduce expenditures, but to increase revenue." Black Sesame Intelligence Xu Xiaoyu, senior market product director, said that some car companies have logically implemented the central computing logical architecture (but it is still separated at the physical level), which will greatly promote the iteration speed of software. In this context, if the C1200 solution is adopted, software capabilities can be released more quickly after the integration of E/E architecture is achieved, thus creating benefits for car companies.

At the scene, Ding Ding also demonstrated the C1200 prototype and demonstrated the single-chip application experience based on C1200. According to reports, Black Sesame Intelligence plans to provide C1200 samples within this year

"L3 will be launched in batches in 2023"

Dozens of TOPS computing power may change Mainstream choice

In recent years, the penetration rate of autonomous driving in the field of automotive intelligence has continued to increase. In the past four years, the share of domestic passenger cars equipped with L2 (L2) functions as standard has reached 29%, while that of new energy vehicles has reached 44%.

Regarding the implementation trend of autonomous driving in the next few years, Shan Jizhang made the following predictions: By 2025, the penetration rate of L2 to L3 autonomous driving technology will exceed 70%; by 2030, L3 Level of autonomous driving technology will be applied on a large scale

Talking about the specific implementation path, Shan Jizhang said that in the field of autonomous driving, more and more new technologies are The Chinese market was used first, especially for hardware. At present, the Chinese market has gradually embarked on a unique autonomous driving route.

"According to the technical solution of the visual radar navigation map, it is basically possible to realize the implementation of L3 and above autonomous driving functions. To move towards true driverless driving in the future, the cooperation of intelligent network technology and vehicle-road collaboration will be needed."

In addition, Yang Yuxin, chief marketing officer of Black Sesame Intelligence, said that with the trend of L2 becoming standard, we need to consider optimizing the system from a cost perspective. A chip with about 50 TOPS can basically meet all the functions of L2 standard equipment of current car companies. In the future, the range of tens of TOPS computing power may become a very popular choice in the market

release of Huashan Developer Plan

Convenient development and openness

With the vigorous development of the edge computing industry, all walks of life are using edge computing to accelerate the implementation of applications. Black Sesame Intelligence also followed the trend and developed the Huashan SOM, an edge computing AI module based on the Huashan No. 2 A1000 chip, and launched a core board developer program for ecological partners, providing SOM products and supporting developer kits.

The Huashan Developer Program is a comprehensive plan that, in addition to the core SOC, also includes components such as memory, power management, and high-speed interfaces. It can be used with base plates of different specifications to meet the needs of various high-demand application scenarios and ensure stable safety performance. The key words of this plan are "open" and "convenient development"

It is reported that for all developer kit customers or customers who carry out project cooperation based on Huashan SOM, Black Sesame Intelligence Both will provide complete hardware design solutions for core boards and reference backplanes. At the basic software level, Black Sesame Intelligence can provide complete kernel code and SOC-level technical support, fully assisting customers in the entire product development and debugging process.

Moreover, Black Sesame Intelligence is constantly developing and improving the "Hanhai" middleware platform to facilitate customers to develop upper-layer applications. Currently, it mainly provides SDKs including the X86 end, SOC end and MCU end. Customers can Choose the appropriate middleware based on your own application scenarios to reduce development workload. It can also provide good support for communication components such as Apollo CyberRT, ROS1, ROS2, ZeroMQ, Iceoryx, SOME/IP that are common in the industry.

Edge computing scenarios are inseparable from the support of algorithms. Huashan SOM is a derivative of the Huashan No. 2 A1000 chip and naturally supports Black Sesame Intelligence's "Shanhai" AI artificial intelligence development platform. Through the continuously optimized AI tool chain, Huashan SOM has successfully transplanted many types of algorithm models such as target detection, point cloud, semantic segmentation, binocular, human posture, face recognition, etc., and has implemented various algorithms including ADAS, BSD, DMS, surround view, etc. in-vehicle applications. For operators that are not currently supported, Black Sesame Intelligence can carry out customized development and provide technical support for third-party algorithm transplantation

At present, there are many customers based on Huashan The developer kit has completed prototype development and is rapidly undergoing mass production. It is understood that Shanghai Ruicheng Communication Technology Co., Ltd., Shenzhen Landau Technology Co., Ltd., Tianjin Youkong Zhixing Technology Co., Ltd., Forui Zhixing Technology (Shanghai) Co., Ltd., etc. have become IDH partners of Black Sesame Intelligence

Starting from the fourth quarter of 2022, Huashan SOM samples have been provided to a group of interested customers, involving dual SOM solutions for low-speed autonomous driving scenarios, single SOM solutions for commercial vehicle domain control scenarios, and industrial inspection, V2X, and outdoor sweeping. Edge computing applications including robots, agricultural drones and other scenarios.

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