Qualcomm Technologies’ Snapdragon Ride ADAS platform is beginning to look like a Magic Dragon as the company extends its long-standing partnership with BMW Group. As part of Qualcomm’s Investor Day, Cristiano Amon, president, and CEO of Qualcomm Incorporated unveiled the Vision Perception, Vision System-on-Chip, and ADAS Central Compute System-on-Chip offering BMW selected as fundamental to their future as a leader in intelligent vehicles.
“Our announcement with BMW today is the onset of a new era in automotive where two technology leaders have come together to design and develop a key element of Snapdragon Digital Chassis for the next generation automobile,” Amon said, “We are very proud of this milestone and cannot wait to bring our jointly designed products on the road.”
Leveraging both companies’ expertise in core innovation, BMW Group and Qualcomm Technologies will extend their long-standing relationship to deliver safe, smart, and sophisticated driving experiences to BMW Group vehicles. BMW’s next-generation Automated Driving stack will be based on the Snapdragon Ride vision system-on-chip (SoC), visual perception, and ADAS central compute SoC controllers managed by Qualcomm® Car-2-Cloud services platform.
“BMW has chosen Qualcomm Technologies as our technology partner and systems solutions provider based on the company’s breadth and depth of portfolio, as well as proven expertise in compute, connectivity, computer vision, advanced semiconductors, and driver assistance technologies,” said Nicolai Martin, SVP Driving Experience, BMW Group. “We look forward to working in direct relationship with Qualcomm Technologies to build our next-generation ADAS/AD platform, as well as to continue delivering world-class driving experiences to our customers.”
The BMW Group is an industry leader in driver assistance innovation for over two decades. In its quest to continue expanding a broad portfolio of driver assistance systems, BMW Group will utilize Qualcomm Technologies to bring a full spectrum of ADAS/AD functions, including front, rear, and surround-view camera computer vision in a dedicated computer vision SoC, as well as a high-performance ADAS central, compute controller, to host BMW’s drive policy and other planning and driving functions.
“Our goal has always been to offer automakers an open, comprehensive and transformative platform that encompasses semiconductor, software, stack, systems, and services,” said Nakul Duggal, senior vice president & GM, automotive, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. “We are honored to be selected by the BMW Group to be its ADAS technology partner for computer vision stack, vision SoC and ADAS central compute controllers, and we look forward to joint development and deployment of these products.”
Qualcomm is the world’s biggest supplier of chips for mobile phones but has been diversifying its business, reporting it now more than a third of its chips are being used in solutions outside of their massive handset footprint.
Qualcomm, which supplies chips for infotainment systems instrument panels to companies including BMW and General Motors, appears to have set its strategic sights on power driver-assistance computers, which make possible safe automated lane-keeping and inevitable self-driving systems which are projected to grow dramatically over the next few years.
For example, Modor Intelligence forecasts the autonomous (driverless) car market valued at USD 20.97 billion in 2020 to reach USD 61.93 billion, projecting a CAGR of 22.75% during the forecast period.
Qualcomm and BMW will use a dedicated Qualcomm computer vision processing chip to analyze data from the front, rear and surround-view cameras. BMW will also use a Qualcomm central computing chip and another set of Qualcomm chips to help the car communicate with cloud computing data centers.
