At CES 2020, Qualcomm stuns consumers with focus on tech for autonomous driving cars rather than phones

Paving the way forward to the future of autonomy with scalable, customizable and power-efficient chipsets for the autonomous driving platform, chip giant Qualcomm made very big product announcements and collaborations at the first big tech show of the year – CES 2020.

Rather than concentrating on exhibiting innovative technologies for smartphones, Qualcomm this year has set the trend for technology related to autonomous vehicles and the announcements were all centered around its platform for autonomous vehicles – Qualcomm Snapdragon Ride, which consists of the family of Snapdragon Ride Safety SoCs, Snapdragon Ride Safety Accelerator and Snapdragon Ride Autonomous Stack.

Qualcomm Snapdragon Ride

Now, Qualcomm through the Snapdragon Ride wants to address the complexity of autonomous driving and ADAS by leveraging its high-performance, power-efficient hardware, industry-leading artificial intelligence (AI) technologies and pioneering autonomous driving stack to deliver a comprehensive, cost and energy-efficient systems solution.

The company claims that the unique combination of Snapdragon Ride SoCs, accelerator and autonomous stack offers automakers a scalable solution designed to support three industry segments of autonomous systems, namely L1/L2 Active Safety ADAS for vehicles that include automatic emergency braking, traffic sign recognition, and lane-keeping assist functions; L2+ Convenience ADAS for vehicles featuring Automated Highway Driving, Self-Parking and Urban Driving in Stop-and-Go traffic; and L4/L5 Fully Autonomous Driving for autonomous urban driving, Robo-taxis, and Robo-logistics.

Snapdragon Ride is expected to be available for pre-development to automakers and tier-1 suppliers in the first half of 2020. Qualcomm Technologies anticipates Snapdragon Ride-enabled vehicles to be in production in 2023.

Qualcomm’s partnership with General Motors

AT CES 2020, Qualcomm Technologies announced its continued collaboration with General Motors (GM) to deliver driving experiences to current and upcoming vehicles. Both companies aim to deliver safe, intelligent next-generation vehicles. As a part of the long-standing relationship, GM wants to continue working with Qualcomm Technologies to power digital cockpit, telematics, and advanced driver-assistance systems.

For more than a decade, Qualcomm Technologies has supplied advanced wireless communication solutions for GM’s connected car applications, including safety, featured in GM’s OnStar devices. The companies have also expanded their partnership into high performance compute platforms and are working together on digital cockpit solutions to design new, rich and immersive infotainment experiences.

Car-to-Cloud Service for Over-the-Air Vehicle Updates

Qualcomm’s Car-to-Cloud Service is the company’s first offering of an integrated, secure connected-car services suite for Qualcomm Snapdragon Automotive Cockpit Platforms and Qualcomm Snapdragon Automotive 4G and 5G Platforms.

Leveraging the company’s broad set of technology assets, Qualcomm’s Car-to-Cloud Service is designed to help automakers keep cockpit and telematics systems up-to-date, and future-proof vehicles by delivering the flexibility needed to activate features at any time, helping automakers to keep pace with consumer technology trends despite the traditional automotive product development cycles.

Cellular Vehicle-to-Everything (C-V2X) platform unveiled

Building on the global momentum of Cellular Vehicle-to-Everything (C-V2X), and to fulfill both the vehicle and the roadside infrastructure needs to address secure road safety, and mobility applications, Qualcomm Technologies introduced the new Qualcomm C-V2X reference platform for vehicular and roadside units (RSUs).

C-V2X is globally compatible with 5G and complements other Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) sensors, such as cameras, radar, and Light Detection and Radar (LIDAR).

The Qualcomm C-V2X reference platform complements C-V2X communication solutions by offering computational power to deliver a full suite of 4G and 5G wireless, and C-V2X, solutions, including multi-frequency GNSS location services for precise positioning, V2X message security, signing and verifications and V2X Intelligent Transport System (ITS) stacks. The Qualcomm C-V2X platform is based on Qualcomm Technologies’ high performance, low power architecture, and is optimized for use with software applications to further accelerate the deployment of C-V2X vehicular systems and RSUs in the US and globally.

Collaborations with Sasken and Denso

Sasken Technologies and Qualcomm Technologies intend to combine their efforts to bring world-class engineering and customization support for automotive Tier-1 customers. Through this working relationship, Sasken’s global engineering teams will augment and support automotive customers in their deployment of automotive platforms and solutions from Qualcomm Technologies. Sasken has built exciting solutions for automotive Tier-1 customers and automakers utilizing Qualcomm Snapdragon Automotive Cockpit Platforms and Qualcomm Automotive Wireless Solutions will experience connectivity, board support packages and knowledge of the automotive software ecosystem.

DENSO, on the other hand, aims to develop next-generation integrated cockpit systems harnessing Qualcomm Technologies’ information and communication technologies, including cutting-edge semiconductors and software solutions developed for smartphones and Denso’s expertise in in-vehicle requirements, functional safety, quality, and security technologies for Human-Machine Interfaces (HMI) products.

Working with Qualcomm Technologies, Denso aims to develop an architecture for systems based on Denso’s Harmony Core integrated cockpit system that can coordinate with external cloud services and new HMI products, which enables car connectivity and advanced safety features like driver status monitoring, driver and passenger authentication, and improved display operability.