Mobileye and STMicroelectronics are co-developing the EyeQ5, the 5th generation of Mobileye’s SoC — with the intent being for the EyeQ5 to function as the central computer for sensor fusion in fully autonomous vehicles — according to a new press release from Mobileye.
The companies apparently expect fully autonomous driving vehicles to begin hitting the market by 2020, going by the wording used in the press release.
The first engineering samples of the EyeQ5 are currently expected to become available sometime by the first half of 2018. The second-half of 2018 will then see the appearance of the first development hardware with the full suite of applications, and the software development kit.
“EyeQ5 is designed to serve as the central processor for future fully-autonomous driving for both the sheer computing density which can handle around 20 high-resolution sensors and for increased functional safety,” stated Professor Amnon Shashua, cofounder, CTO, and Chairman of Mobileye. “The EyeQ5 continues the legacy Mobileye began in 2004 with EyeQ1, in which we leveraged our deep understanding of computer vision processing to develop highly optimized architectures to support extremely intensive computations at power levels below 5W to allow passive cooling in an automotive environment.”
The press release provides more:
To meet power consumption and performance targets, the EyeQ5 will be designed in advanced 10nm or below FinFET technology node and will feature eight multithreaded CPU cores coupled with eighteen cores of Mobileye’s next-generation, innovative, and well-proven vision processors. Taken together, these enhancements will increase performance 8x times over the current 4th generation EyeQ4. The EyeQ5 will produce more than 12 Tera operations per second, while keeping power consumption below 5W, to maintain passive cooling at extraordinary performance.
…The EyeQ5 continues Mobileye’s long-standing cooperation with STMicroelectronics. Leveraging its substantial experience in automotive-grade designs, ST will support state-of-the-art physical implementation, specific memory and high-speed interfaces, and system-in-package design to ensure the EyeQ5 meets the full qualification process aligned with the highest automotive standards. ST will also contribute to the overall safety- and security-related architecture of the product.
Further technical details can be found in the press release.