Project description
More powerful processor units for self-driving cars
By 2024, more than 1.5 million cars in Europe will be conditionally automated, allowing drivers to turn their attention away from the road by handing over control to the system. This is classified as Level 3 automation – a precursor to self-driving vehicles (Level 5). Fully autonomous cars (with performance equal to that of a human driver) require substantially high processing power that is not currently available with today’s microprocessors, which are either high-performance but not power efficient, or low-power but unable to reach top performance. The EU-funded XPU project will develop a modular architecture solution to reach high performance at low power. The aim is to strike a balance between performance, security and power consumption.
Objective
According to Frost & Sullivan (2017), https://store.frost.com/global-autonomous-driving-market-outlook-2018.html in 2024 there will be in Europe more than 1.5 million cars which will have at least conditional automation with each car requiring an average of about 2000€ in chips to enable automatic driving. Thus the total available market in Europe will reach 3000M€ in 5 years with a robust CAGR of 30%. Markets in USA and China will be of similar size.
The requirements for Level 5 autonomous cars (fully-autonomous vehicles with performance equal to that of a human driver in every driving scenario including extreme environments) will require substantially high processing power not currently available with today’s microprocessors. Processors in future cars not only must deliver increasing higher computing power but also they must do so as efficiently (low-power) as possible given strict automotive safely constraints. Furthermore, fully-autonomous cars require robust real-time features and dynamic balance between safety, performance and power. In contrast, current microprocessors are either high-performance but are not power efficient (e.g. Intel), or are low-power but unable to reach top performance (e.g. ARM), and generally do not have a strong real-time capability. These key bottlenecks are hindering advances towards fully automated vehicles. MOSAIK has defined a novel modular architecture designed from the ground-up to solve these urgent challenges.
To keep European Industry leadership (https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/automotive-and-assembly/our-insights/a-long-term-vision-for-the-european-automotive-industry) setting the framework for car connectivity and user experience is a must. And to do so European industry needs a European Semiconductor company able to reach very high-performance at low power and provide the balance between performance, security and power consumption the industry is asking for.
Fields of science
- engineering and technologymechanical engineeringvehicle engineeringautomotive engineeringautonomous vehicles
- engineering and technologyelectrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineeringelectronic engineeringcomputer hardwarecomputer processors
- social sciencessociologyindustrial relationsautomation
- natural sciencesphysical scienceselectromagnetism and electronicssemiconductivity
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
SME-1 - SME instrument phase 1Coordinator
08034 BARCELONA
Spain
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.