They've got initial silicon of Dream Chips' ADAS SoC fabbed in GlobalFoundries' 22FDX (FD-SOI) technology, and it's got record power efficiency (read the full press release here). The chip offers high performance image acquisition and processing capabilities and supports AI / Neural Network (NN) vision operation with a total of 1 TOPS at 500 MHz on 4 parallel engines. With all functions including quad-core Arm® Cortex®-A53, Tensilica DSPs, and INVECAS’ LPDDR4-Interfaces activated, the SoC shows single digit power dissipation without the need for forced cooling, which is of significant importance for embedding in automotive environments.
[caption id="attachment_11538" align="alignleft" width="277"] Courtesy: Dream Chips Technologies[/caption]
Targeting automotive computer vision applications, the SoC was created in close cooperation with Arm, ArterisIP, Cadence, GF, and INVECAS as part of the European Commission’s ENIAC THINGS2DO reference development platform, where about 40 partners in Europe cooperated to propel the FDSOI-Design Ecosystem.
Of particular importance is the new and reduced power footprint of this SoC in 22FDX-technology from GF. AI/NN-operation for image recognition is available today, but most of the solutions need active cooling. Implementation of Dream Chip Technologies’ SoC on GF’s 22FDX platform demonstrated single digit Watt and cooling targets for designers managing power dissipation. If needed, the SoC bears the potential to increase the performance even further up to 2 TOPS at 1.0 GHz by applying GLOBALFOUNDRIES’s forward body-bias capabilities and other optimization techniques.
The jointly developed ADAS SoC platform from Dream Chip Technologies is available now. Part of GF’s FDXcelerator™ Partner Program, Dream Chip is the largest independent German Design Service company specialized in the development of large ASICs, FPGAs, embedded software and systems with a strong application focus on automotive vision systems (ADAS).
