Two more giants have joined forces in the field of automotive chips!

On November 16, Qualcomm announced that it would supply chips for self-driving cars to German automaker BMW. BMW’s next-generation ADAS and autonomous driving systems will use Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Ride platform, which includes a central computing chip (SoC), computer vision SoC and Qualcomm’s Car-to-Cloud service platform.

(Screenshot of Qualcomm’s official website)

It is understood that BMW models based on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Ride autonomous driving platform will be able to use Qualcomm’s specially customized computer vision processing chip to process and analyze data from front-view, rear-view and surround-view cameras. BMW will also use Qualcomm’s central computing chip (SoC) to run its own autonomous driving decision-making and planning algorithms, enabling data exchange between cars and cloud computing centers.

According to foreign media reports, a BMW spokesman said that the new chips from Qualcomm will be used in new models of its “Neue Klasse” series of cars, which will start production in 2025. It is reported that “Neue Klasse” is BMW’s modular platform for electric vehicles. Through this modular platform, the new electric vehicle will no longer use the current fifth-generation battery, but will be equipped with higher energy density and faster charging speed for the first time. Fast sixth-generation battery and four-wheel-drive configuration. In addition, the platform will use recyclable and sustainable materials as much as possible.

As we all know, Qualcomm is the world’s largest supplier of mobile phone chips, but has been seeking to diversify its business. For Qualcomm, more than a third of chip sales come from devices other than mobile phones.

At the same time, Qualcomm has also been focusing on the research and development of designing autonomous driving chips. Qualcomm previously announced at an investor presentation that it was supplying chips for infotainment system dashboards to companies such as General Motors. Qualcomm said it will continue to expand its chip business, which it expects to grow from about $100 billion today to $700 billion over the next decade.

Ammon, President and CEO of Qualcomm, also said: “The cooperation between Qualcomm and the BMW Group has opened up a new era in the automotive field. As leading technology companies, the two parties will jointly design and develop key elements of the Snapdragon digital chassis to empower the next generation of vehicles. .We are proud of this milestone cooperation and look forward to the products created by the cooperation between the two parties as soon as possible.”

In fact, it has become the norm for major chip manufacturers and major car companies to join forces. As early as 2017, BMW announced cooperation with Intel and Mobileye to develop fully autonomous vehicles; Audi also cooperated with NVIDIA, based on NVIDIA’s DRIVE computing platform , using the latest technology in artificial intelligence concepts including neural networks, using computer science to model decision-making to simulate the way the human brain works, but most of their work has been focused on infotainment systems; Samsung also supplies Audi Through the Exynos processor, we can jointly build driverless cars, but we can also see that Samsung is relatively slow in entering the field of driverless cars.