Samsung Electronics Collaborates With Ambarella for Automotive AI Central Domain Controller

Samsung Electronics has partnered with an edge AI semiconductor company Ambarella to provide the 5-nanometer process technology for the all-new CV3-AD685 automotive AI central domain controller.

This will help transform the next generation of autonomous driving vehicle safety systems by bringing new levels of AI processing performance, power and reliability. The CV3-AD685 is the first production version of Ambarella’s CV3-AD family of automotive AI central domain controllers with Tier-1 automotive suppliers.

They will offer solutions using the CV3-AD system-on-chip (SoC) product family. Moreover, Samsung’s 5nm process technology is optimized for automotive-grade semiconductors with extremely tight process controls and advanced IP for exceptional reliability and outstanding tracebility.

Fermi Wang, president and CEO at Ambarella, highlighted Ambarella and Samsung Foundry’s rich history of collaboration. “We are excited to bring the world-class 5 nm technology to our new CV3-AD685 SoCs. Samsung’s proven automotive process technology allows us to bring new levels of AI acceleration, systems integration and power efficiency to ADAs and L2+ through L4 autonomous vehicles.”

Sang-Pil Sim, Executive Vice President and Head of Foundry Corporate Planning at Samsung Electronics, outlined that Samsung brings 5nm EUV FinFET technology to automotive applications for unprecedented ADAS and vision process performance. “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.”

The New Tech

The CV3-AD685 integrates Ambarella’s next-generation CVflow AI engine. It includes neural network processing that is 20 times faster than the previous generation of Ambarella’s CV2 SoCs. It provides general-vector and neural-vector processing capabilities to deliver the overall performance required for full autonomous driving (AD) stack processing, including computer vision, 4D imaging radar, deep sensor fusion and path planning.

Samsung Electronics described CV3-AD685 as the first in CV3-AD product family to use Samsung’s 5nm process. The SoC integrates advanced image processing, a dense stereo and optical flow engine, ARM, Cortex A78AE and R52 CPUs, an automotive GPU for visualizations, and a hardware security module (HSM). It also features an algorithm first architecture that provides support for the entire autonomous-driving software stack.

Furthermore, the high-performance, power efficient, and scalable CV3-AD family complements a wide range of solutions for assisted driving while advancing vehicle automation. The integrated CV3-AD685 SoC enables information from various sensors to be fused for robust L2+ to L4 autonomous driving.