China's automotive-grade chip suppliers Horizon Robotics Technology and Black Sesame Technologies are in a position to rival Nvidia and Texas Instruments (TI) in both high- and low-computing power autonomous driving processors required by their domestic carmakers, according to industry sources.
The Journey 5 high performance smart driving processor from Horizon Robotics is among the world's only two autonomous driving processors with high computing performance now available for carmakers, with the other being Nvidia's Orin Drive series, the sources sad.
The sources continued that Horizon Robotics in April already delivered shipments of over 100,000 pieces of Journey 5 chips, which are now used in over 20 car models from many Chinese EV makers including BYD, Li Auto, Nio, and Aion.
Meanwhile, BYD has also adopted Nivida OrinX series processors for its first premium SUV model, Yangwang U8, and its another brand Denza's N7 model. Other Chinese EV makers Lio Auto, Nio and Xpeng Motors have also adopted Nvidia Drive Orin SoCs to support autonomous driving of their cars.
Black Sesame is also actively building a presence in China's smart car market. At the recently-held 2023 Auto Shanghai, the company unveiled its new-generation high-performance automated driving processor HuaShan A1000 Pro, and its first-generation offering has been incorporated into Chinese cars including Hycan's flagship battery EVs and Dongfeng Motor's new models.
Black Sesame has recently announced that its A1000-based solution combines intelligent driving and automatic parking functions in the same domain controller), and the main processor can support 50-100 TOPS physical computing power to serve NoA (navigate on autopilot) and other functions for L2+ assisted driving. The company now controls the cost of the solution at under CNY3,000 (US$433.53, and has applied the solution to cars from Anhui Jianghuai Automobile Group.
In terms of driving processors with low computing power, Horizon Robotics' Journey 3 and SemiDrive Technology's V9P driving SoC are competing with TI's TDA4 series in the China market for entry-level cars, with the former two targeting at models with price tags of under CNY200,000.
Industry sources said Chinese carmakers are tending to adopt China's homegrown driving processors for lower-end cars to bring down costs and bolster domestic chipmakers.
Article translated by Willis Ke
