Samsung Electronics to Produce Self-Driving Car Chips Using 5-nm Process Technology

Samsung Electronics’ foundry business has entered the car self-driving semiconductor market.

Samsung Electronics, a world leader in advanced semiconductor technology, and Ambarella, an edge AI semiconductor company, said on Feb. 21 that Samsung’s foundry business is providing its 5-nanometer (nm) process technology to Ambarella for its newly announced CV3-AD685 automotive AI central domain controller.

The collaboration will help transform the next generation of autonomous driving vehicle safety systems by bringing new levels of AI processing performance, power and reliability.

Samsung Electronics plans to explore the automotive market by expanding the vehicular semiconductor process to a 4-nm process technology.

The move may be construed as Samsung Electronics’ bid to narrow the gap with TSMC of Taiwan, the global foundry leader.

The CV3-AD685 is the first production version of Ambarella’s CV3-AD family of automotive AI central domain controllers with Tier-1 automotive suppliers announcing they will offer solutions using the CV3-AD system-on-chip (SoC) product family.

Samsung’s 5nm process technology is optimized for automotive-grade semiconductors with extremely tight process controls and advanced IP for exceptional reliability and outstanding traceability.

Ambarella will rely on Samsung’s 5nm process maturity and the technology’s solid track record.

This 5nm process is backed by the company’s extensive experience in automotive foundry process, IP and service package development to enable manufacturers to create cutting-edge innovations in assisted and automated mobility.

“Ambarella and Samsung Foundry have a rich history of collaboration, and we are excited to bring their world-class 5nm technology to our new CV3-AD685 SoCs,” said Fermi Wang, President and CEO at Ambarella.

“Samsung’s proven automotive process technology allows us to bring new levels of AI acceleration, systems integration and power efficiency to ADAS and L2+ through L4 autonomous vehicles.”

The CV3-AD685 integrates Ambarella’s next-generation CVflow AI engine, which includes neural network processing that is 20 times faster than the previous generation of Ambarella’s CV2 SoCs.

It also provides general-vector and neural-vector processing capabilities to deliver the overall performance required for full autonomous driving (AD) stack processing, including computer vision, 4D imaging radar, deep sensor fusion and path planning.

“Samsung brings 5nm EUV FinFET technology to automotive applications for unprecedented ADAS and vision processor performance,” said Sim Sang-pil, Executive Vice President and Head of Foundry Corporate Planning at Samsung Electronics.

“With Tier-1 automotive suppliers already adopting the technology, we believe other automotive companies will also consider using the Ambarella CV3-AD SoC product family manufactured in Samsung’s 5nm process.”

The CV3-AD685 will be the first in the CV3-AD product family to use Samsung’s 5nm process, and this SoC integrates advanced image processing, a dense stereo and optical flow engine, ARM Cortex A78AE and R52 CPUs, an automotive GPU for visualizations, and a hardware security module (HSM).

It features an “algorithm first” architecture that provides support for the entire autonomous-driving software stack.

The high-performance, power efficient and scalable CV3-AD family, which is built specifically for ADAS, complements a wide range of solutions for assisted driving while advancing vehicle automation.

The integrated CV3-AD685 SoC enables information from various sensors to be fused for robust L2+ to L4 autonomous driving.

Samsung Foundry’s industry-leading process technology and advanced 3D-packaging solutions are powering many of the latest mobile, HPC and automotive solutions.

Samsung’s 5nm process is also backed by the Samsung Advanced Foundry Ecosystem (SAFE™) program. The SAFE™ program ensures close collaboration between Samsung Foundry, ecosystem partners and customers to deliver robust SoC designs based on certified key design components including Process Design Kits (PDK), reference flows with Design Methodologies (DM), a variety of Intellectual Properties (IP), and on-demand design support.

Samsung Electronics, announcing its 3Q business performance for last year, said vehicle chips are predicted to emerge as one of three application areas along with memory and mobile sectors in 2030 or after.

The company has set the goal of becoming a global No. 1 vehicular semiconductor maker.

Samsung Electronics has revealed a plan to expand the latest 4-nm process technology to produce vehicular chips.

The company began to mass produce vehicular solutions using a 14-nm process technology in 2018, it has expanded production of vehicular solutions to 8-nm and 5-nm process technologies as part of efforts to make them as future growth engines by diversifying their portfolio.

Samsung’s foundry business plans to raise the portion of sales in the non-mobile businesses to more than half of its total by 2027 by aggressively exploring high-performance low-electricity chip markets, such as HPCs, automotive and 5G on top of the mobile sector.