In what it’s defining as a series of industry firsts, Arm and its growing ecosystem have unveiled Arm Automotive Enhanced (AE) processors alongside new virtual platforms to accelerate automotive development cycles by up to two years.
“For the first time, we are bringing Armv9-based technologies to the automotive sector, enabling the industry to take advantage of the AI, security and virtualization capabilities that this latest generation of the Arm architecture delivers,” said Dipti Vachani, SVP and GM of the Automotive Line of Business, Arm. “To meet the growing performance demands of today’s vehicles, we are leveraging our leadership in the infrastructure market by bringing server-class Neoverse technology to automotive, along with new Armv9-based Cortex-A products for scalability.”
The full line-up of products announced by Arm includes:
Arm Neoverse V3AE: Bringing Neoverse technology to the automotive sector for the first time, delivering server-class performance for AI-accelerated autonomous and ADAS workloads
Arm’s first v9-based Cortex-A processors purpose-built for automotive:
Arm Cortex-A720AE: Delivering industry-leading sustained performance with SoC design flexibility for a broad range of software-defined vehicle (SDV) applications
Arm Cortex-A520AE: Providing leading power efficiency with functional safety features to scale across automotive use cases
Arm Cortex-R82AE: The highest-ever performing real-time processor for functional safety which delivers 64-bit computing to real-time processing for the very first time
Arm Mali-C720AE: A configurable ISP optimised for the most demanding computer and human vision use cases
A range of configurable system IP to enable the Arm silicon ecosystem to deliver scalable, high-performance automotive SoCs
“We are not stopping there. Looking ahead, we see that systems are only going to get more complex, the need for safety will become even greater, and we’ll need to bring all of these compute components together for our partners, standardising for consistency where it matters,” said Vachani. “Arm CSS for Automotive will deliver pre-integrated and validated configurations of Arm AE IP optimised for performance, power, and area using a leading-edge foundry process. Our first CSS for automotive is expected to be delivered in 2025.”
Traditional automotive development cycles are linear with the delivery of processor IP, then the development of silicon, and only when hardware becomes available around two years later, can software developers start.
“We’re changing that with this new approach: virtual prototyping on industry-leading, latest-generation Arm AE IP, which allows software developers to start before the physical silicon is available,” explained Vachani. “We’re partnering with industry leaders including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Cadence, Corellium, Siemens and others to deliver these virtual platforms and cloud solutions, which allow for earlier, more seamless development across the full software stack in collaboration with partners including Autoware Foundation, BlackBerry QNX, Elektrobit, Kernkonzept, LeddarTech, Mapbox, Sensory, Tata Technologies, TIER IV, Vector and more.”
According to Arm, the announcement marks a critical step that will enable the automotive ecosystem to unlock new opportunities for developers and accelerate time to market for leading OEMs, automotive Tier 1 suppliers, silicon partners, and software providers that are all working to deliver future software-defined vehicles.
