AMD Inside Everything: Vehicles, Datacenters, HPC and its Aggressive Strategy in the Automotive Space

As we are nearing the end of the summer period, semiconductor and technology companies are announcing their strategies and partnerships for the coming months and years. AMD ’s aggressive stance to the automotive sector looks very positive. AMD wants to be part of the total automotive ecosystem when it comes to datacenters for autonomous driving research and development and neural network training, HPC for academic automotive research and have its solutions and platforms on embedded sensor systems and in the vehicle, either on the ADAS/ autonomous driving platform or in the cluster for in-vehicle telematics and graphics rendering.

On the 4th of August 2022, AMD announced a partnership with ECARX , a mobility technology company. The companies will work together on an in-vehicle computing platform for next-generation electric vehicles (EVs), expected to be in mass production for global rollout in late 2023. The ECARX digital cockpit will be the first in-vehicle platform to be offered with AMD Ryzen Embedded V2000 processors and AMD Radeon RX 6000 Series GPUs along with ECARX hardware and software.

Combining the extensive experience in automotive digital cockpit design of ECARX with AMD advanced computing power and stunning visual graphic rendering capabilities, the companies aim to deliver an innovative in-car experience. The digital cockpit will launch with advanced features including driver information mode, heads-up display, rear seat entertainment, multiple-displays, multi-zone voice recognition, high-end gaming, and a full 3D user experience.

This announcement comes weeks after the announcement of the LiDAR start-up company Luminar Technologies partnering with ECARX on automotive grade technologies with the intent to enable advanced safety and automated driving capabilities in the production of consumer vehicles and commercial trucks.

Strategy Analytics reached out to AMD for commentary on how this partnership is related to the partnership between ECARX and AMD. Wayne Lyons, Marketing Director of AMD replied to the statement: “We are certainly having discussions around integration of both technologies, these announcements are the result of activities initiated some time before the AMD acquisition of Xilinx and are currently unrelated.”

AMD’s Aggressive Penetration into the Automotive Market

AMD and Xilinx (Xilinx was acquired by AMD back in February 2022 for $49B) are aggressively building on an automotive strategy targeting ADAS/ AD and infotainment platforms in the vehicle. AMD is also involved in research and development with several autonomous driving and robotaxi developers which cannot be named due to NDAs.

AMD claims that in 2022 has shipped approximately 25 million units with its 28nm and 16nm family of chipsets targeting ADAS applications. As well as the unit shipments, the exhibit below also highlights several partnerships.

Additionally, AMD-Xilinx has multiple design wins related to DMS, with Ford and GM amongst the cohort of customers, though it is important to note that AMD-Xilinx serves as a Tier 2 supplier and is not supplying the technology directly to the OEMs.

• 通用汽车 : Seeing Machines is known to supply the DMS software for Super Cruise, with Joyson as tier 1. Based on an announcement subsequent to the launch of Super Cruise, Strategy Analytics believes that the DMS software runs on a Xilinx Zynq-7000 FPGA.
• 福特 : Similar to Super Cruise, BlueCruise is a “hands-free” highway assist system and has so far been announced for the F-150, Mustang Mach-E and Ford Evos. Strategy Analytics notes that Seeing Machines reportedly provides the DMS for BlueCruise, using its automotive-qualified Fovio processor which is a variant of the Xilinx Zynq-7000 FPGA. Veoneer is the Tier 1 partner.

As with the battle between central and edge computing architectures in autonomous driving, there? is also a battle between the use of high performance but highly costly and power-hungry GPU-based processors and the low performance but affordable CPU-based MCUs - this battle has yet to be resolved, but AMD is looking to leverage the flexibility of its FPGA solutions with leading-edge processor architectures to tailor solutions as the market evolves.

AMD Ryzen Embedded V2000 Processors

The Ryzen Embedded V2000 Series processors are the second generation designed for automotive in-vehicle infotainment and instrumentation applications, plus additional applications such as industrial edge, thin client, and miniPC systems. Equipped with up to eight CPU cores and seven GPU compute units the Ryzen Embedded V2000 Series processors can power up to four independent displays simultaneously in 4K resolution for customers and applications that need high-performance display capabilities. A single AMD Ryzen Embedded V2000 Series processor provides up to 2x[i] the multi-threaded performance-per-watt, up to 30 percent[ii] better single-thread CPU performance and up to 40 percent[iii] better graphics performance over the previous generation.

AMD Radeon RX 6000 Series GPUs

AMD Radeon RX 6000 Series GPUs are built on the company’s AMD RDNA? 2 graphics architecture, and is designed to span use across next-generation desktop PCs, laptops and consoles to mobile devices and automotive infotainment systems. Engineered from the ground up for performance and power efficiency, AMD RDNA 2 architecture offers up to 2X higher performance[iv] and up to 50 percent more performance-per-watt[v] in select titles compared to the previous-generation AMD RDNA architecture.

The automotive EV market, as well as the technology required to support it, represents an unprecedented growth opportunity in the years ahead for AMD. As noted by Asif Anwar, executive director – PBCS and EVS, Strategy Analytics. “EV adoption is now a key underlying factor for growth in the automotive semiconductor market and the associated semiconductor demand is forecast to grow at a CAAGR of 31% over 2021 - 2026. The EV revolution is here, with next-generation EV platforms at the leading edge of domain- and zonal-based architecture driving adoption of the digital cockpit, ADAS and the connected vehicle.”

[i] Testing conducted by AMD Performance Labs as of July 2020 on the?Ryzen??Embedded V2718 and June 2018 on the Ryzen Embedded V1605B processor both at 15 watts (STAPM mode enabled) using?Cinebench?R15 nt.?Results may vary.?EMB-169?

[ii] Testing conducted by AMD Performance Labs as of July 2020 on the Ryzen? Embedded V2718 and June 2018 on the Ryzen Embedded V1605B processor both at 15 watts (STAPM mode enabled) using Cinebench R15 1T. Results may vary. EMB-171

[iii] Testing conducted by AMD Performance Labs as of July 2020 on the Ryzen? Embedded V2718 and June 2018 on the Ryzen Embedded V1605B processor both at 15 watts (STAPM mode enabled) using 3DMark11. Results may vary. EMB-172

[iv] Testing done by AMD performance labs October 20 2020 on RX 6900 XT and RX 5700 XT (20.45-201013n driver), AMD Ryzen 9 5900X (3.70GHz) CPU, 16GB DDR4-3200MHz, Engineering AM4 motherboard, Win10 Pro 64. The following games were tested at 4k at max settings: Battlefield V DX11, Doom Eternal Vulkan, Forza DX12, Resident Evil 3 DX11, Shadow of the Tomb Raider DX12. Laptop manufacturers may vary configurations, yielding different results.Performance may vary.

[v] Testing done by AMD performance labs 10/16/20, using Assassins Creed Odyssey (DX11, Ultra), Battlefield V (DX12, Ultra), Borderlands 3 (DX12, Ultra), Control (DX12, High), Death Stranding (DX12 Ultra), Division 2 (DX12, Ultra), F1 2020 (DX12, Ultra), Far Cry 5 (DX11, Ultra), Gears of War 5 (DX12, Ultra), Hitman 2 (DX12, Ultra), Horizon Zero Dawn (DX12, Ultra), Metro Exodus (DX12, Ultra), Resident Evil 3 (DX12, Ultra),?Shadow of the Tomb Raider (DX12, Highest), Strange Brigade (DX12, Ultra), Total War Three Kingdoms (DX11, Ultra), Witcher 3 (DX11, Ultra no HairWorks) at 4K. System comprised of a Radeon RX 6800 XT GPU with AMD Radeon Graphics driver 27.20.12031.1000 and an Radeon RX 5700 XT GPU with AMD Radeon Graphics driver 26.20.13001.9005, Intel Core i9-9900K (3600 MHz 8C/16T), 32 GB at 2133 MHz, ROG MAXIMUS XI HERO (WI-FI) motherboard. Laptop manufacturers may vary configurations, yielding different results.??Performance may vary. RX-549