Mobileye, maker of camera-based Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) for automotive industry, introduced its 4th generation system-on-chip, the EyeQ4. Investors are closely watching Mobileye to see if it will head the driverless autonomous car supplier pack.
The first design for EyeQ4 in series production has been secured for a global premium European car manufacturer for production to start in early 2018. If we were to guess at a automaker it could be Audi, Mercedes-Benz, BMW or Volvo.
USA Today reports that analysts predict that MobileEye is close to having systems that are 99% right, not the 90% of some would-be rivals. Mobileye is leading the pack when it comes to developing a single-camera automatic emergency braking system, which is likely for the Audi Q7 crossover.
EyeQ4 contains 14 computing cores with 10 specialized vector accelerators with extremely high utilization for visual processing and understanding.
The EyeQ4 supports high-end customer functions including semi-autonomous driving. The EyeQ4 would support fusion with radars and scanning-beam lasers in the high-end customer functions.
The design meets the ISO-26262 standard and will provide a safety level of ASIL-B(D).
The EyeQ4 will accept multiple camera inputs and process a safety “cocoon” around the vehicle – essential for autonomous driving.
After the EyeQ 4″high” Mobileye also plans the launch of the EyeQ4 “medium”
Engineering samples of EyeQ4 are should be ready by the fourth quarter of 2015.
First test hardware with the full suite of applications including active safety suite of customer functions, environmental modeling (for each of the 8 cameras), path planning for hands-free driving and fusion with sensors, is expected to be available in the second quarter of 2016.
Series production is supported for early 2018 start of production.