Samsung will manufacture Ambarella's 5nm chip for self-driving cars

Samsung will manufacture Ambarella’s new 5nm chip for self-driving cars. In a press release earlier today, the Korean firm announced that it will manufacture the CV3-AD685 SoC (system-on-a-chip) that will serve as the AI central domain controller for autonomous cars. Several “Tier-1” automotive suppliers are already planning products based on the upcoming SoC.

Ambarella is a California-based fabless semiconductor design company. It designs and develops semiconductor chips used in various electronic products, including autonomous cars, robotics, and more. The CV3-AD685 is the first production version of its CV3-AD family of AI central domain controllers for self-driving cars. It is a 5nm chip featuring ARM’s Cortex-A78AE and R52 CPUs. Ambarella has paired the CPU with an automotive-grade GPU and a hardware security module (HSM).

Built specifically for ADAS (advanced driver assistance systems), the CV3-AD685 also integrates advanced image processing and a dense stereo and optical flow engine. Ambarella’s next-gen CVflow AI engine includes neural network processing that is “20 times faster” than its previous-gen solutions (CV2 SoCs). Moreover, the new chipset also benefits from “general-vector and neural-vector processing capabilities,” enabling everything from computer vision and 4D imaging radar to deep sensor fusion and path planning for fully autonomous driving (AD) stack processing.

This chipset features as “algorithm first” and allows for “information from various sensors to be fused for robust L2+ to L4 autonomous driving”. Long story short, Ambarella has designed an SoC that can pave way for a wide range of solutions for assisted driving. However, since Ambarella is a fabless company, it doesn’t own a semiconductor manufacturing facility. As such, the company has tapped Samsung for manufacturing the CV3-AD685 SoC.

Samsung will manufacture the 5nm automotive chip for Ambarella

Ambarella’s CV3-AD685 is the first product in the CV3-AD  family to use Samsung’s 5nm process. But the company is confident that it is up for the task. The Korean firm says its 5nm process technology is optimized for automotive-grade semiconductors. Backed by the Samsung Advanced Foundry Ecosystem (SAFE) program, the company ensures “extremely tight process controls and advanced IP for exceptional reliability and outstanding traceability”. Samsung boasts extensive experience in the automotive foundry process.

“Samsung brings 5nm EUV FinFET technology to automotive applications for unprecedented ADAS and vision processor performance,” said Sang-Pil Sim, an Executive Vice President at Samsung. “With Tier-1 automotive suppliers already adopting the technology, we believe other automotive companies will also consider using the Ambarella CV3-AD SoC product family manufactured in Samsung’s 5nm process.”