Qualcomm against the rest of the world, that could perfectly well be the title, because silently and without big presentations or dramas, the company puts Intel, NVIDIA and AMD in check. One of the main markets we will have in 2022 and beyond is automotive, where brands need processors, SoCs, and technologies from the PC and server world more than ever. Snapdragon Tower This is Qualcomm’s bet for IA and BMW has already done so with its services.
Today and for the moment, everything goes through Artificial Intelligence and Deep Learning, the example we saw a few days ago with NVIDIA Omniverse shows very clearly where the market and its industries are going. If you want to stay on top you have to innovate and just like Intel has done with its heterogeneous Alder Lake architecture, automakers are shifting to the most innovative technology and that involves the best chips possible.
Qualcomm Snapdragon Ride: automated driving and assistance
This isn’t the first interaction between Qualcomm and BMW as such, but it is the start of a much stronger path towards what we all see: cutting edge, newer cars. In many brands, Americans have got their hands on different technologies, such as information or infotainment, but given the relevant milestones seen in the market (again NVIDIA is an example), they make us think that what is seen in new prototypes from several manufacturers is an understatement.
What is the novelty then? The announcement between Qualcomm and BMW to use the Snapdragon Ride platform and chips. This will not affect the new BMW iX as such, but it will affect the models that arrive at the end of next year. Why more than a year of GAP? Basically because the Qualcomm platform will arrive by mid-2022 in a few units and it will be by the end when it is deployed in greater volume.
Leaders in ADAS and AD?
That Qualcomm wants to compete with NVIDIA and soon AMD in advanced driver assistance systems and automated driving is nothing new in itself. Snapdragon Ride focuses on that and more with the AI in between. The main SoC has front, rear and surround camera recognition capabilities, as well as full control over driver assistance, although the problem is that leaked information about them is scarce today.
At the moment there are no models as such or versions, but we know that the performance will be very high, in particular, it will reach more than 10 TOPS with less than 5 watts of consumption in an ADAS SoC -10 assumed. So, which would be the most basic model, we would go to the high end with 720 TOPS and 130 watts which would encompass two ADAS-60 chips, where the cooling needs should already be active.
At the moment there is no concrete information on the ARM versions of the chips or the GPUs they will implement, but according to rumors Qualcomm could change the nomenclatures on all its chips to launch a new era that will logically include the ‘automobile industry .
