Samsung Electronics to manufacture self-driving car chips for Ambarella

Samsung Electronics' manufacturing complex in Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi [SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS]

Samsung Electronics will manufacture Ambarella’s automotive system-on-chips with a 5-nanometer foundry process, the company said Tuesday.

Ambarella is a Santa Clara, California-based artificial intelligence (AI) chip designer.

The U.S. company’s latest system-on-chip, named CVS-AD685, will be deployed in an advanced driving assistant system for self-driving cars.

Equipped with Ambarella’s AI computing engine CVflow, the CV3-AD685 was first introduced during the CES 2023 tech fair held in Las Vegas in January. Targeting Level 2+ to Level 4 autonomous vehicles, the system-on-chip serves as a brain of a self-driving car using a camera and radar.

On the five-level autonomous driving scale, Level 5 is the highest and Level 1 the lowest. At Level 4, the vehicle can drive itself within certain parameters, and driver input is an option.

“Samsung Electronics’ cutting-edge 5-nanometer process improves an automotive vehicle’s performance significantly,” said Sim Sang-pil, executive vice president of foundry business at Samsung Electronics.

“We hope many clients in the auto industry will be able to experience the advanced performance of CV3-AD system-on-chip.”

Samsung Electronics plans to push up the non-mobile orders’ share in its foundry business to over 50 percent by 2027.

BY SHIN HA-NEE [shin.hanee@joongang.co.kr]