By Godson Umejiego, Bureau Chief, The Americas

At the Snapdragon Summit, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. unveiled its most powerful automotive platforms, Cyber Era NG learns.

Powered by Qualcomm Oryon™ CPU – Qualcomm Technologies’ fastest CPU now tailored for automotive – these Elite tier automotive platforms are the latest addition to the Snapdragon® Digital Chassis™ Solution portfolio, designed to bring unmatched power and intelligence to next-generation vehicles. Automakers have the option to utilize Snapdragon® Cockpit Elite to power advanced digital experiences and Snapdragon Ride™ Elite to power automated driving capabilities.

Through a unique flexible architecture, automakers will also have an option to seamlessly combine both digital cockpit and automated driving functionalities on the same SoC – an innovative capability available on Snapdragon Digital Chassis solutions.

“Qualcomm Technologies remains at the forefront of innovation with platforms like Snapdragon Cockpit Elite and Snapdragon Ride Elite, as the automotive industry evolves towards centralized computing, software-defined vehicles and AI-driven architectures,” said group general manager, automotive, industrial and cloud, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc Nakul Duggal. “With our strongest performing compute, graphics and AI capabilities, coupled with industry leading power efficiency and cutting-edge software enablement for digital cockpits and automated driving, these new elite Snapdragon automotive platforms address the industry’s needs for higher compute levels, empowering automakers to redefine automotive experiences for their customers.”

Unified Architecture, Unmatched Performance

Accelerated AI Performance: The dedicated Neural Processing Unit (NPU), designed for multimodal AI, is targeting a 12x performance boost over previous cockpit platforms,* enabling real-time external environment and cabin data processing. This advancement facilitates live decision-making, adaptive responses, and proactive assistance, ensuring personalized in-cabin experiences. Equipped with transformer accelerators and vector engines, along with mixed precision support, the NPU in Snapdragon Ride Elite is designed to deliver low-latency, highly accurate, and efficient end-to-end transformers, maintaining optimal power and performance.

Flexible, Centralized Processing with Software Virtualization and Multi-OS Support: The heterogeneous platform seamlessly runs multiple applications without performance loss, offering exceptional concurrency and multitasking for numerous cameras, sensors, rich user experiences and advanced AI-enabled audio with virtualization. Automakers can create configurable software-defined vehicles (SDVs) for all tiers, providing flexibility and scalability while simplifying vehicle architecture. This architecture is designed to accelerate deployment schedules, ensuring customers can enjoy the latest innovations and features more quickly than with our prior architectures.  The elite-tier automotive platforms also utilize Qualcomm Technologies’ comprehensive software stack, supporting hardware virtualization using a Type-1 safe hypervisor with the capability to support multiple guest virtual machines with unique operating systems that operate free from interference, concurrently and independently.

Industry-Leading Power Efficiency: Engineered to deliver exceptional performance while minimizing energy consumption and helping ensure that vehicles operate smarter and longer. The solution is a combination of intelligent power management hardware and software that balances core utilization and application runtime.

Intuitive Experiences: Engineered to support context-aware applications, the platforms are designed to enable hands-free automated driving that anticipates needs, along with real-time driver monitoring and enhanced object detection for a smoother, more confident ride. Its improved Qualcomm® Adreno™ GPU is targeting to deliver a 3x performance boost* with advanced rendering capabilities, meeting demands for gaming, multimedia, and dynamic driver information.

Safety-Focused: Designed to meet automotive safety standards for ASIL-D systems with a dedicated safety island controller and robust hardware architecture for isolation and interference-free operation, helping to enable reliable quality-of-service for specific ADAS functions, as well as comfort and confidence from drivers and passengers.

Software-Defined: Purpose-built for the industry’s shift to SDVs, the elite-tier platforms are designed to take an end-to-end approach for upgradeability through the unified software framework that emphasizes software reuse; designed to help automakers accelerate feature development via a cloud-based workbench, streamlining software development for continuous improvement and reducing time to market for new features and services.

Cutting-Edge Camera Subsystem for Safety and Comfort: Our elite-tier automotive platforms feature a powerful, efficient camera system with an advanced Image Signal Processor (ISP) for clear, responsive visuals in extreme driving conditions. They are designed to support over 40 multimodal sensors, including up to 20 high-resolution cameras for 360-degree coverage and in-cabin monitoring. Compatible with the latest and upcoming automotive sensors and formats, our platforms use AI-enhanced imaging tools to deliver optimized image quality for both enhanced in-cabin experiences and advanced features.

Automated Driving and AI Software Stack: The Snapdragon Ride Elite platform exemplifies the approach of software virtualization, offering an end-to-end automated driving system with advanced features like vision perception, sensor fusion, path planning, localization, and complete vehicle control all running concurrently, independently and free from interference. Similarly, Snapdragon Cockpit Elite supports rich multimedia features, on-device AI with a fully integrated edge orchestrator, optimized gaming and advanced 3D graphics for rich user experiences. Snapdragon Cockpit Elite is also designed with safety, security and long-term support (API compatibility) features built into the design with the ability to run the instrument cluster, infotainment dash, and multiple passenger instances in independent virtual machines, with the ability to share content and data where needed.

The Snapdragon Cockpit Elite and Snapdragon Ride Elite will be available for sampling in 2025. Technology collaborations are underway with leading car manufacturers, including Li Auto and Mercedes-Benz AG, who will feature Snapdragon Elite tier automotive platforms in their future commercialized vehicles.

“We are incredibly excited for the new Snapdragon Cockpit Elite and Snapdragon Ride Elite solutions and the transformative potential they hold for next-generation vehicles,” said President of Li Auto Donghui Ma,. “The automotive industry is on the cusp of a revolution, leveraging the latest advancements in computing, artificial intelligence, and software to deliver unparalleled experiences for drivers and passengers alike. We look forward to working with Qualcomm Technologies to combine our innovative spirit with these new solutions to redefine in-vehicle experiences.”

“Qualcomm Technologies stands at the forefront of automotive innovation, and we are pleased to continue our trusted collaboration with them by integrating Snapdragon Cockpit Elite into our future vehicles,” said Chief Software Officer, Mercedes-Benz AG Magnus Östberg. “This powerful and efficient central compute technology will enable us to provide our customers with an unmatched in-vehicle experience—one that is uniquely tailored, seamlessly connected, and remarkably intuitive.”