Intel’s Mobileye Working on EyeQ Ultra-soc for Level 4 Autonomous Driving

Mobileye, a subsidiary of Intel, wants to have EyeQ Ultra ready by the end of 2023, a soc that will handle the computing for autonomous driving at Level 4 for cars. The company expects the chip to go into production for end-use in 2025.

The EyeQ Ultra should contain the components required for autonomous driving computing in a single package, the company said. The SOC therefore contains four classes of accelerators for different tasks, in addition to CPU cores, ISPs and GPUs. The SOC must be able to efficiently process input from subsystems with cameras, radars and lidars.

Mobileye wants to produce the soc at 5 nanometers. In total, the chip must provide up to 176 tera operations per second of computing power. Mobileye’s current EyeQ5 offers 12 tops of computing power. With autonomous driving based on Level 4, almost no action by a human driver is required anymore, although the possibility for human intervention while driving is still present.

Mobileye also announces the EyeQ6L and EyeQ6H for advanced driver-assistance systems. The EyeQ6L is the successor of the EyeQ4, but 55 percent smaller and aimed at low consumption. This soc should go into production in mid-2023. The EyeQH should follow the EyeQ5 and offer twice the performance of that soc. Production of this chip will start at the end of 2024. Both chips will then be produced at 7nm.