Ambarella, which makes edge AI and vision processors used in autonomous vehicles, will incorporate Plus’s AI-driven perception software into its SoCs for passenger cars through a newly announced partnership. Each of the two Silicon Valley companies has years of experience providing tier-1 parts suppliers and the automakers themselves with key products for delivering various levels of driving automation.
Perception is an especially important area of technology for this purpose because, as the name implies, it determines how an autonomous vehicle perceives the world around it. This requires giving the vehicle real-time information about other vehicles, traffic patterns, the road it’s driving on and other critical environmental factors.
Let’s set some context for the industry trends behind this deal, then dig into the specifics for Plus and Ambarella.
When It Comes To Vehicle Autonomy, Manufacturers Want Adaptability
The autonomous vehicle space continues to heat up, with companies including Tesla, GM and Ford offering their own autonomy systems for their respective AVs. These companies and their competitors are always looking for better autonomy offerings, which creates pressure for makers of autonomy subsystems—including perception solutions—to constantly improve their wares. In this context, both software and hardware must continue to improve rapidly to accommodate each new generation of platforms. More than that, automakers seek perception solutions with the built-in adaptability to fit the rapidly evolving autonomous space and keep pace with its rate of change.
Automakers want to reduce time-to-market by shortening development cycles at the same time they want to control the costs of rolling out products faster. They also want versatile solutions that support a wide range of hardware platforms and sensor configurations. This allows OEMs to take advantage of the best hardware and software available.
Solutions that fit this bill will also give the OEMs and car companies better supply chain resiliency because the manufacturers can multi-source components when supply gets constrained. This approach also prevents them from getting locked into an inflexible hardware-software bundle. Looking to the future, the automakers want scalable solutions that can address the full range of customer requirements so that autonomy can be expanded into L3 (conditional automation) or even L4 (high automation) systems. In other words, they want solutions that are future-proof.
The Logic Driving Ambarella’s Partnership With Plus
Ambarella is an edge AI semiconductor company that offers a family of AI domain controllers under the CV3 brand. Founded in 2004, Ambarella had already delivered devices used in HD broadcasting infrastructure and high-end security cameras before applying its vision-processing know-how to automotive applications. According to Ambarella, its CV3-AD family of SoCs now provides industry-leading AI performance per watt.
Plus is an autonomous driving technology provider that leverages transformer-based AI models to replace rules and code in its development of autonomous driving systems. Plus says that its PlusVision perception product offers OEMs an end-to-end solution that can help accelerate ADAS software development. Crucially, PlusVision has been designed to help OEMs with the future-proofing mentioned above, supporting L0 to L3 systems being delivered today and L4 systems already in development. Plus accomplishes this in part by remaining hardware-agnostic, enabling it to take advantage of the best hardware for a given ADAS implementation. By this point, Plus’s AD stack and perception functionality benefits from millions of miles of real-world data accumulated on roads across Australia, the U.S. and Europe.
The Ambarella-Plus partnership gives Plus a well-established partner for the passenger car space, which desperately needs a power-efficient solution for perception. Many of Plus’s existing products, including the SuperDrive self-driving system and the PlusProtect safety system, originated as trucking solutions and already have customer wins or partnerships with heavy-vehicle makers or suppliers such as Hyundai, Bosch, Iveco and Traton Group. Ambarella also joins Nvidia, Texas Instruments and Qualcomm as hardware partners in perception solutions for automotive OEMs. Through the Ambarella partnership, Plus widens the reach of its solutions and gives automotive OEMs and tier-1 suppliers more hardware choices.
This Plus and Ambarella partnership should prove to be symbiotic as it benefits all parties; it certainly helps enhance both companies’ play in the ADAS space, while creating what should be a best-in-class solution. Tier-1s and OEMs will likely now take more notice of both companies’ passenger automotive perception solutions, which would continue to give both companies more traction in the space. Given the hot market for AI investments and Plus’s recent commercial partnerships and customer wins, I’d expect Plus to do another funding round, which will likely be its last, before going public.
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