Author: Turbocharged Fatty

” We are facing the advent of the smart car era, and many of our friends might not be aware of how profoundly this era will change the world.” As said by the founder and CEO of Horizon Robotics, Yu Kai, during the Horizon Performance Computing Platform for Smart Cars launch event.

That’s right, with the arrival of the smart car era, the demand for AI chips in the automotive industry will increase significantly. If a car’s power comes from an engine or electric motor, then the power of a smart car comes from the AI chip, the “digital engine.”

At the Horizon Performance Computing Platform for Smart Cars launch event on July 29th, Horizon officially released the journey towards the fifth-generation central computing chip for intelligent cars. Simultaneously, the full-scenario intelligent computing platform for intelligent vehicles and the full-scenario intelligent solution for intelligent vehicles based on the journey to the fifth-generation chip were also unveiled.

Horizon Journey to the Fifth-generation Applies

Journey to the fifth-generation is Horizon’s third-generation vehicle-grade product and the first domestically-developed vehicle-grade AI chip that follows the ISO 2626 functional safety process certification and passes ASIL-B certification.

Let’s take a look at the basic information of Horizon Journey to the Fifth-generation:

• Based on an eight-core ARM Cortex-A55 core.

• Equipped with dual-core Cortex-M33 MCU lock-step safety islands.

• AI operations are performed using dual-core Bayesian architecture BPU.

• A single-chip AI computing capacity of 128TOPS, 1283 FPS calculation performance, 660ms latency, and 30W power consumption.

• Uses TSMC 16nm process technology and is packaged with a 27x27mm inverted chip ball grid array package with thermal spread.

In addition to these data, we can also obtain some information from them:

1. Eight-core ARM Cortex A55 Core

Horizon Journey to the Third generation uses a quad-core Arm Cortex-A53 core, released in 2012, an industry widely adopted 64-bit Cortex-A series CPU.

Horizon Journey 5 adopts eight-core ARM Cortex A55 cores based on the latest ARMv8.2 architecture, which has higher performance and maintains similar power consumption as Arm Cortex-A53. Under the same frequency and process conditions, the memory performance of the ARM Cortex A55 can reach up to twice that of the Cortex-A53, and the efficiency is 15% higher than that of the Cortex-A53, with ten times more scalability than the Cortex-A53.

2. Why does Horizon prioritize BPU over CPU and GPU?

Traditional chip processor giants such as Intel, NVIDIA, and AMD have strong advantages in CPU and GPU, and they all see AI as an important strategic development direction.

However, Horizon believes that currently, general processors such as CPU and GPU fall far short of today’s computing requirements. Therefore, they have introduced the BPU (Brain Processing Unit) architecture.

BPU is a typical heterogeneous multi-instruction-multi-data system, mainly used to support deep neural networks and is more efficient than CPU. The architecture’s central processor is a complete system, and the storage architecture design has been specially optimized to allow data to freely pass and perform various calculations, improving the efficiency of AI operations.

As Horizon’s third-generation BPU, the Bayesian BPU combines BPU design with modern neural network co-optimization to support AI operators in different road scenarios. It also uses AI to accelerate computing and optimize BPU low-batch, high-performance workloads for real-time autonomous driving.

With Horizon Journey 5 and Bayesian BPU, they can achieve a frame rate that exceeds NVIDIA Orin and outperforms NVIDIA Xavier in the Microsoft MS CoCo dataset.

So let’s return to the topic of Horizon Journey 5. Faced with the mainstream chips on the market, how will Horizon Journey 5 perform? We can see the performance comparison below:

Compared to the currently popular chips in the market, the solo computing power and energy efficiency of Horizon Journey 5 are second only to NVIDIA’s Orin chip. One reason is the manufacturing process. Currently, NVIDIA Orin uses a 7nm process, while Horizon Journey 5 uses a 16nm process. The higher the precision, the more electronic components can be manufactured in the same material, the thinner the connection lines, the higher the integration, and the lower the power consumption.

Previously, Horizon announced plans to implement mass production of the Journey 6 chip in 2024, which will use 7nm process technology, and its computing power will reach 400 TOPS.

MATRIX 5 Central Computing Platform

At the press conference, Horizon showed everyone the MATRIX 5, a full scenario intelligent central computing platform for all-terrain vehicles based on four Journey 5 chips.

The solo board computing power of MATRIX 5 is 512 TOPS, and two boards together can achieve 1024 TOPS of AI computing power, meeting the computing needs of full-scenario vehicle calculation and supporting the development and implementation of full-link functions of complex scene high-level autonomous driving.

The MATRIX 5 central computing platform also has rich interfaces, including 48 camera inputs, full 8 million pixel access, real-time Ethernet, and abundant heterogeneous computing resources. The 8-core GPU, 32-core CPU, 8-core DSP, and 4-core machine vision driving engine provide dual guardianship for functional safety and information security.

So, is Horizon going to start doing hardware?

Not exactly…

Horizon will fully open the reference design of the high-performance computing platform MATRIX 5, helping partners build hardware faster. Currently, it has also cooperated with four partners: Continental Group, Neusoft Reach, Luxshare Precision, and Link Com Innovation, each of which has completed four hardware products based on the MATRIX 5 high-performance computing platform.

Apart from the MATRIX 5 high-performance computing platform, Horizon has officially launched the MATRIX 5 all-scenario intelligent solution. Based on the MATRIX 5 hardware reference design, it is also compatible with partners’ central computing platforms based on the Journey 5, covering high-speed autonomous driving scenarios, urban autonomous driving scenarios, parking scenarios, providing autonomous driving and cabin intelligent interaction based on the aforementioned scenarios, as well as the integrative intelligent vehicle experience inside and outside the vehicle.

Additionally, Yu Kai announced that a DEMO product based on MATRIX SuperDrive will be able to achieve demonstrations of complex urban autonomous driving at the end of this year and will achieve SOP production in the fourth quarter of next year.

Let’s OS together

This time, Horizon will collaborate with partners to create an open and open-source Chinese safe real-time operating system, “Together OS”.

Together OS uses an open software architecture based on the seL4 open-source microkernel, and all industry ecological partners can participate in co-construction.

Moreover, Together OS is not limited to Horizon’s Journey chips and is compatible with mainstream in-vehicle chips in the industry. It has a lightweight virtualization, multi-domain security isolation, open software architecture, and high scalability. Together OS supports multiple scene applications such as intelligent cabin and intelligent driving. It also supports mainstream operating systems in the industry, including Linux, Android, Zebra, UNIX, HarmonyOS.

Currently, Horizon has announced the first batch of ecological partners for Together OS, including: AutoCore, Changan Automobile, Great Wall Motors, Jianghuai Automobile Group, Lion Intelligent Technology, Zebra Intelligent Driving, SAIC Group.

Most talked about: Positioning as Tier2

At this press conference, in addition to the Journey 5 and MATRIX 5 central computing platform, what was talked about the most by Horizon was the positioning as Tier2.

Yu Kai, the founder and CEO of Horizon, stated at the press conference that “Horizon insists on being Tier2, not mass-produced hardware, not bundled software, not a closed solution.”The Horizon continues to insist on providing chips and algorithms to Tier 1 and delivering them integrated to OEMs.

At the same time, responding to the demands of customers for rapidly improving software iteration development capabilities in the era of Software 2.0, Horizon will also open authorization algorithm IPs and form joint teams to co-create algorithms and scenarios. This includes the joint laboratory co-established with SAIC AI Laboratory, the intelligent laboratory co-established with Changan, the joint laboratory co-established with Borui, and the User Experience Union Centre co-established with Great Wall Motors, among others.

Horizon’s core is to “position itself well in the industry”, and the positioning of Horizon remains unchanged, which is Tier 2 in the automotive industry. What Horizon emphasizes is to “empower AI” for Tier 1 and OEMs.

Horizon has a clear understanding of its core competitiveness and has made choices that comply with the rules of the automotive supply chain game based on this understanding.

Finally

Looking back at the development of Horizon, it has always chosen a more secure path.

By the end of last year, the shipment volume of Journey 2 chips had exceeded 100,000. Jouney 3 chip also gained recognition from “Ideal One”, allowing it to be installed.

During the Shanghai Auto Show this year, I also experienced the Horizon Matrix Pilot automatic driving assistance engineering test car, equipped with three Journey 3 chips.

The Horizon set a goal last year, “to reach more than 100,000 units sold by the end of 2020, more than 500,000 units in 2021, and more than 1 million units in 2022.”

Now, the Horizon has achieved its goal for 2020, and 2021 is already halfway through. With the official release of the fifth-generation model and the upcoming sixth-generation model, the Horizon’s “journey” will speed up.

This article is a translation by ChatGPT of a Chinese report from 42HOW. If you have any questions about it, please email bd@42how.com.