LAS VEGAS, Jan. 9, 2024 – Today at CES, Intel announced plans to drive the company’s AI everywhere strategy into the automotive market, including a deal to acquire Silicon Mobility, a fabless silicon and software company that specializes in SoCs for intelligent electric vehicle (EV) energy management. It also announced: a new family of AI-enhanced software-defined vehicle system-on-chips (SoCs), with Zeekr as the first original equipment manufacturer (OEM) to adopt the new SoC to deliver its generative AI-driven living room experiences to next-generation vehicles.
“Intel is taking a ‘whole vehicle’ approach to solving the industry’s biggest challenges. Driving innovative AI solutions across the vehicle platform. This will help the industry navigate the transformation to EVs,” said Jack Weast, vice president and general manager of Intel Automotive. “The acquisition of Silicon Mobility aligns with our sustainability goals while addressing a critical energy management need for the industry.”
More: Intel at CES 2024 (Press Kit) | Intel Automotive at CES 2024 (Quote Sheet) | Software-Defined Vehicle Transformation Starts with Intel (Fact Sheet)
The EV transition alongside customer demand for in-vehicle experiences fuels Intel’s strategy to enable the SDV. Intel also announced a commitment to deliver the industry’s first open UCIe-based chiplet platform for SDVs. It will work with imec to ensure the packaging technologies meet the rigorous quality and reliability requirements of the automotive industry. It will also chair a new industry-defining international standard for EV power management.
Today, Intel SoCs are in more than 50 million vehicles, powering infotainment, displays, digital instrument clusters and more. Tomorrow, Intel’s expanded AI-enhanced “whole vehicle” roadmap will move the industry toward a more scalable, software-defined and sustainable future.
Intel to Acquire Silicon Mobility to Unlock a More Sustainable Electrified Future
Silicon Mobility SAS, a portfolio company of Cipio Partners and Capital-E, is a fabless automotive silicon and software company that designs, develops and deploys EV energy management SoCs. Silicon Mobility’s SoCs feature industry-leading accelerators purpose-built for energy delivery. They are co-designed with highly advanced software algorithms for significant gains in vehicle energy efficiency.
Silicon Mobility’s technology portfolio will extend Intel’s reach in the vehicle beyond high-performance compute into intelligent and programmable power devices. The acquisition is subject to necessary approvals.
Intel’s Open Platforms to Bring AI PC Experience to the Car
The new family of AI-enhanced SDV SoCs address a critical industry need for power and performance scalability. Moreover, the family of SoCs features AI acceleration capabilities from Intel’s AI PC roadmap. This enables the most desirable in-vehicle AI use cases, such as driver and passenger monitoring.
A demo showed 12 advanced workloads, including generative AI, e-mirrors, high-definition video conference calling, and PC games. These were running concurrently across multiple operating systems, including mixed critical use cases. The demo illustrates how automakers can consolidate legacy electronic control unit (ECU) architecture to enhance efficiency, manageability, and scalability. This can be achieved while seamlessly integrating their own custom solutions and AI applications.
“Intel’s AI-enhanced SDV SoCs combine the best of AI PC and Intel data center technologies. Moreover, these are necessary to support a true software-defined vehicle architecture.,” Weast said.
Zeekr First to Bring Intel-powered GenAI Experience to Next-Gen EVs
Geely’s Zeekr brand will be the first OEM to use Intel’s new family of SDV SoCs. Andy An, president of Geely Holding Group and CEO of Zeekr Company Limited, highlighted the importance of forward-compatibility on Intel systems. He emphasized that this, combined with Intel AI acceleration, enables Zeekr to continually scale and upgrade services. This approach allows Zeekr to meet the demands of customers seeking next-gen experiences, including generative AI-based voice assistants.
Open Standards Key to Industry Success
Intel and SAE International announced a committee to deliver an automotive standard for Vehicle Platform Power Management (J3311). This initiative aims to fuel a faster, smoother transition to EVs and a sustainable SDV. Moreover, Intel will chair the committee.
Inspired by proven-in-use power management techniques from the PC industry’s ACPI standard, the new SAE standard will accelerate progress by adopting and enhancing advanced power management concepts from the PC industry, helping all EVs become more energy-efficient and sustainable.
The standards committee currently includes industry representation from Stellantis, HERE, and Monolithic Power Solutions (MPS). The committee is open to additional industry participation. Moreover, the goal is to deliver the first draft standard within 12 to 18 months.
Intel Commits to Open Automotive Chiplet Platform
Intel also announced its intent to work with R&D hub imec to ensure Intel’s advanced chiplet packaging technologies meet the strict quality and reliability requirements necessary for automotive use cases.
The move underscores a commitment to be the first automotive supplier to support the integration of third-party chiplets into its automotive products. This also gives OEMs the freedom and choice to incorporate a custom chiplet into an Intel roadmap product at a fraction of the cost of a fully custom SoC. The ability to mix and match chiplets further eliminates the risk of vendor lock-in and fosters a more scalable software-defined architecture.
