By Greg Gao

(JW Insights) Jul 20 -- Axera Technology(爱芯元智), a developer of computer vision processors, announced its official entry into the smart driving chip market in June this year.

The company claims extensive experience in designing Artificial Intelligence SoCs for computer vision applications. It showcased its in-car products and related application solutions at the recently concluded 2023 World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai.

Gong Huimin, president of Axera Technology’s automotive division said in an interview with JW Insights, “Although we officially entered the smart driving chip market this year, we have accumulated considerable technical reserves. Our technology has been widely applied in areas such as smart cities, and there are similarities in the foundational visual perception and computation technologies between smart cities and automotive applications. Therefore, we can quickly produce products suitable for in-car scenarios by applying the relevant technologies to vehicles.”

The intelligent driving sector has already evolved into several distinct sub-markets. There are L3 and L4 autonomous driving systems, L2+ and L2++ systems similar to highway Navigate on Autopilot(NOA) and city NOA, as well as the L2 ADAS market.

The industry has almost reached a consensus that over the next 3-5 years, L2 ADAS, L2+, and L2++ advanced driver assistance systems will become standard features in intelligent vehicles.

Apart from Tesla’s in-house developed FSD chip, most mass-produced assisted/autonomous driving systems rely on chips from companies like Mobileye and NVIDIA. However, over the past two years, a new wave of smart electric vehicles, along with the rise of Chinese domestic car manufacturers, has created rapid development opportunities for Chinese chip companies. Several enterprises have already emerged and gradually entered into competition with foreign intelligent driving chip companies.

Axera Technology has developed two series of intelligent driving chips, M55 and M76, based on its self-developed core technologies. Notably, the M55 series underwent vehicle regulations certification last year and has since been actively working on mature solutions and commercial deployment. Two car models equipped with M55 series chips have entered large-scale production. 

As for the M76 series, it leads the industry in both Transformer algorithm performance and low power consumption, with a current computing power of 60 TOPS. It is expected to pass vehicle regulations certification early next year and target the L2+ intelligent driving market. Furthermore, the development of another chip series, M77, with a computing power of over 100 TOPS, is also underway, according to the company.

Gong emphasized, “There are indeed many entrants in the intelligent driving market, and the competition is extremely fierce. The core issue is to find the right market positioning and ensure that your products have a competitive advantage in the targeted market.”

Axera Technology has fully integrated market demands and launched the integrated parking and development kits for driving domain controller, and Camera Monitor System (CMS).

In addition to the successful integration of Axera Technology’s M55 series chips into vehicle assembly, the company has many orders on hand. Based on its projections, Axera Technology will enter a phase of mass delivery this year and move into a significantly large-scale delivery stage by next year, said Gong.

Founded in May 2019 and based in Beijing, Axera Technology focused on developing Artificial Intelligence (AI) SoCs for computer vision applications. These are applicable in various spaces, such as autonomous driving, smart cities, wearables, and smart homes.