The late Cambrian and its competitors

The biggest change for Cambrian Technology in 2021 is its entry into the autonomous driving chip market. It is easy to understand why Cambrian is making autonomous driving chips: autonomous driving is the biggest application scenario for AI in the future, and there is a chip shortage in the global automotive market. As an AI chip design company, there is no reason not to enter the market. But in this hot market with many competitors, is it too late for Cambrian to start now? Some competitors say that in the autonomous driving chip market, if they cannot mass produce in 2020, they will be out. How does Cambrian respond to this?

At the Cambricon earnings conference held on August 23, Cambricon Technologies founder and CEO Chen Tianshi answered questions from a reporter from China Electronics News through an investor interaction platform. Chen Tianshi gave his answer to the above question: "Currently, L2-level in-vehicle smart chips have been used in some models of some car manufacturers, but they cannot yet support high-level intelligent driving. Intelligent driving technology is far from mature, and the basic hardware required for high-level intelligent driving is in the early stages of development. Cambricon's layout for in-vehicle smart chips is just in time."

At present, in terms of the core indicators of autonomous driving chips, the computing power of a single SoC of NVIDIA Atlan has reached 1000TOPS (samples are expected to be provided to developers in 2023); the single computing power of the Journey 5 chip released by Horizon Robotics last month is 128TOPS (autonomous driving domain controller hardware based on the Journey 5 chip is expected to be mass-produced in the second quarter of next year), and Black Sesame announced at the Shanghai Auto Show that the maximum computing power of a single Huashan 2 chip can reach 196TOPS. The single computing power of the autonomous driving chip announced by Cambricon in July this year is 200TOPS. It is still under development and is expected to be released in two years. Can Cambricon beat other competitors?

Faced with a fiercely competitive market landscape, at the second extraordinary shareholders' meeting of 2021 held on August 19, Chen Tianshi said: "A small company like us does not have any historical baggage. What we have to do is to make our main products to the extreme, without having to compromise for other markets or other products."

Running into the autonomous driving chip track

Cambrian is quietly "running into" the autonomous driving chip track, and the business carrier of automotive chips is Cambrian Xingge.

On January 5, 2021, Cambrian Xingge (Nanjing) Technology Co., Ltd. was established with a registered capital of 30 million yuan. The company is 100% owned by Cambrian, but "automotive chips" are not clearly stated in the relevant business. Tianyancha shows that the business scope of Cambrian Xingge (Nanjing) Technology Co., Ltd. is mainly artificial intelligence basic software development, artificial intelligence application software development, artificial intelligence basic resources and technology platforms, artificial intelligence industry application system integration services, artificial intelligence theory and algorithm software development, etc.

In February 2021, industry insiders revealed that Wang Ping, McKinsey's global director partner and head of the automotive industry in Greater China, joined Cambrian, indirectly confirming that Cambrian is about to enter the field of intelligent driving.

On May 3, at the Cambricon 2020 annual performance briefing, Chen Tianshi responded to whether there were plans to enter the automotive industry and said: "The company has been evaluating the business and product strategies in this application field. As a leading company in AI chips, Cambricon is one of the very few manufacturers that has the ability and potential to build a unified intelligent ecosystem for cloud, edge, and car, so we will not be absent from such an important application scenario."

From July 8th to 10th, the 2021 World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) was held in Shanghai. Cambrian participated in the exhibition. A huge painting of "car" was hung in the center of the top of its booth with the slogan: "Exploit the collaborative advantages of Cambrian's cloud, edge and end to meet the growing computing power needs of autonomous driving", announcing that Cambrian has officially entered the automotive chip market.

It was also at WAIC 2021 that Chen Tianshi disclosed for the first time the key data of Xingge's in-vehicle smart chip under development: over 200TOPS AI performance, 7nm process, automotive grade, independent safety island, mature software tool chain, and support for continuous update and iteration of customer algorithms through an open software platform, efficiently supporting the needs of high-level intelligent driving. Chen Tianshi said: "Smart driving chips are closely related to the chips we have made in the past, so expanding the cloud and edge chip categories to cars is a very natural extension."

Some industry insiders are not optimistic about Cambricon's entry into the automotive chip market, because the entry threshold for automotive-grade chips is very high, and the leading companies have basically established themselves. At the same time, they questioned Cambricon's technical capabilities. Yu Kai, founder and CEO of Horizon Robotics, an autonomous driving chip company, said at the end of 2020: "Everyone has seen the popularity of new energy vehicles this year. If you want to enter the 'finals' circle, you must have achieved chip mass production in 2020, otherwise you will be out. Because the subsequent development rhythm will be very tight, and the 'game' will be over by 2023."

Is it too late for Cambrian to join the market? Chen Tianshitou responded to reporters at the financial report meeting: Intelligent driving, as an emerging technology, is far from mature, and the basic hardware required for high-level intelligent driving is in the early stages of development. The layout of Cambrian's in-vehicle intelligent chips is just in time.

At the same time, some car companies have given positive signals of recognition for the future development of Cambrian's automotive chips. On July 16, Cambrian disclosed that Cambrian Xingge Technology has introduced a number of strategic investors, among which Weiran, Shangqi, and Wendi have attracted much attention. Because Weiran (Jiangsu) Investment Co., Ltd., chaired by Li Bin, is an affiliated company of NIO; SAIC Group is the major shareholder of Shanghai Shangqi Investment Management Partnership (Limited Partnership); Ningbo Meishan Free Trade Zone Wendi Investment Co., Ltd. is a wholly-owned subsidiary of CATL. Companies in the upstream and downstream automotive industry chains such as NIO, SAIC, and CATL have become strategic investors of Cambrian Xingge.

It should be said that autonomous driving technology is still in its early stages of development and is far from mature. It is not too late to enter the market now. Judging from the investment and layout of traditional car companies in AI chip startups, they still adopt the strategy of putting their eggs in multiple baskets, which shows that the chip market is not settled. SAIC Group is an investor in both Horizon and Black Sesame, and now it has become a strategic investor in Cambrian. SAIC Group stated on the investor interaction platform on August 9 that in terms of chips, the company has invested in more than a dozen domestic leading chip companies including Horizon and Black Sesame.

Can we achieve the best performance without any burden?

It is understood that Xingge Technology's in-vehicle smart chip will integrate self-developed automotive intelligent processors, automotive CPU cores (mostly authorized by ARM) and other automotive computing cores, as well as various automotive peripheral interfaces. It will mainly be used to process the perception data collected by various sensors such as vision of smart cars, and plan and control intelligent driving based on the processing results of the perception data.

At present, there are many competitors in the in-vehicle AI chip market, including early entrants such as Horizon Robotics, Black Sesame, CoreDrive Technology, and Leapmotor, as well as foreign giants such as NVIDIA and Intel. In addition, another Chinese giant, Huawei, has joined the market with a full-stack solution including chips.

The competition in the field of automotive autonomous driving chips is mainly in several key dimensions, one of which is facing "tickets" and "boat tickets". Unlike other consumer electronic products, automotive chips have more stringent requirements for safety and have a considerable certification process. It is not easy to get a boat ticket, which may be a prerequisite for Yu Kai to enter the "finals". Not to mention old companies such as Nvidia and Intel Mobileye (because these companies have been in the game for a long time, and their shipments are not of the same order of magnitude, such as in 2020, Intel Mobileye's EyeQ chip shipments were 19.3 million, and it reached cooperation with 28 car companies), even AI chip startups from the same school, Black Sesame and Horizon's automotive-grade chips have come out. So far, Horizon has launched three chips, two of which were mass-produced on-board last year. The latest data shows that Horizon's automotive chip shipments have exceeded 400,000 pieces.

The second is the chip computing power TOPS. The autonomous driving industry generally believes that the chip computing power required for L2 autonomous driving is less than 10TOPS, L3 requires 30~60TOPS, L4 requires more than 100TOPS, and L5 requires more than 1000TOPS. It is precisely because of this that chip computing power TOPS has become the core weight of the competition among various chip companies.

Last month, Horizon released the Journey 5 chip and announced that it has a computing power of 128TOPS (INT8). Horizon expects that the mass production of autonomous driving domain controller hardware based on the Journey 5 chip will be achieved in the second quarter of next year. By the fourth quarter of next year, Horizon will achieve mass production SOP of the SuperDrive autonomous driving solution based on the Journey 5 chip.