AI chipmaker Hailo collaborates with Renesas to enable automotive customers to seamlessly scale from ADAS to automated driving

Hailo, the leading edge Artificial Intelligence (AI) chipmaker, announced its collaboration with Renesas, a premier supplier of advanced semiconductor solutions, to deliver a powerful and energy-efficient processing solution enabling advanced driver-assistance (ADAS) functions and automated driving (AD) systems in motor vehicles. The joint Hailo-Renesas solution will make sophisticated ADAS technology more accessible in cars of all types.

The combination of Hailo-8 processors, designed for heavy Neural Network (NN) acceleration, with the powerful Renesas R-Car V3H & R-Car V4H systems-on-chip (SoCs), powers robust, scalable, efficient, and cost-effective ADAS solutions for zonal and centralized vehicular ECUs. The solutions are scalable for a wide range of ADAS functions from ADAS L2+ up to L4 AD functions requiring very high tera-operations per second (TOPS), while delivering best-in-class TOPS/W.

“ADAS and AD features have proven to be instrumental in minimizing accidents and saving lives. However, technological challenges have caused great difficulties for automakers looking to make such advanced functions accessible in anything but higher-end vehicles,” said Orr Danon, CEO and Co-Founder of Hailo. “Together with Renesas, we are offering a solution helping democratize ADAS, so its benefits can be enjoyed by more and more drivers. AI will play a major role in making our roads safer, and with industry leaders like Renesas helping us innovate, we will make driving both safer and more affordable.”  

“Automotive OEMs are looking for scalable solutions for ADAS and AD to streamline software development,” said Yusuke Kawasaki, Director, Automotive Digital Products Marketing Division at Renesas. “We are confident that our collaboration with Hailo, which has expertise in AI technology, will enable our customers to easily extend the performance of the R-Car so that they can flexibly and quickly incorporate ADAS/AD functionality in various classes of vehicles.”

Key features for the joint Hailo-Renesas solution include:

• Independent scalability in AI & compute, allowing flexibility and cost-effectiveness for Level 2+ to Level 4 ADAS designs
• The highest performing solution available today in the automotive market, ranging from 60 TOPS to over 170 TOPS for multi-sensor perception and fusion
• Best-in-class power efficiency, enabling ECUs to be passively cooled, which reduces the BOM and system cost
• Functional safety for the ADAS/AD ECU with Renesas R-Car (R-Car V4H is expected to achieve ASIL-B and D metrics for the real-time domain) and Hailo (Hailo-8 supports ASIL B)        
• An open software ecosystem allowing OEMs/Tier-1s more control & possibility for innovation

A single Hailo-8™ delivers unprecedented performance to edge devices. Featuring up to 26 TOPS at a typical power consumption of 2.5 W, the chip is built with an innovative architecture that enables edge devices to run sophisticated Deep Learning applications that could previously only run on the cloud. Hailo-8’s advanced structure translates into higher performance, lower power, and minimal latency, enabling enhanced privacy and better reliability for smart devices operating at the edge.

Hailo continues to make significant strides in the automotive industry, partnering with industry leaders to create high-performance, scalable AI solutions for automotive Electronic Control Units (ECUs), enabling power-efficient AI acceleration with low energy consumption to advance automotive innovation.