Embedded World: Micron’s Full Suite of Automotive-Grade Solutions Qualified for Qualcomm Automotive Platforms to Power AI in Vehicles

At Embedded World, Micron Technology, Inc. qualified a suite of its automotive-grade memory and storage solutions for Qualcomm Technologies Inc.’s Snapdragon Digital Chassis, a set of cloud-connected platforms designed to power data-rich, intelligent automotive services.

(Image source: Qualcomm Technologies)

Micron’s low-power double data rate 5X (LPDDR5X) memory, Universal Flash Storage (UFS) 3.1, Xccela flash memory and quad serial peripheral interface NOR (SPI-NOR) flash have been pre-integrated for the latest-gen of Snapdragon automotive solutions and modules, including the Snapdragon Cockpit Platform, Snapdragon Ride Platform and Snapdragon Ride Flex SoC,  all of which are intended to handle the increasing requirements of modern and future workloads for AI technologies. This work between the 2 companies is aimed at helping the ecosystem build next-gen intelligent vehicles powered by sophisticated AI.

“Today’s software-defined vehicles and immersive cockpits require highly reliable, ultralow-latency memory and storage to process massive amounts of data at the edge and enable time-critical near-instant decision-making,” said Chris Jacobs, VP, embedded market segments, Micron. “Our broad portfolio of automotive memory and storage solutions provides the instant-on performance required on the road, and we’re thrilled to work with Qualcomm Technologies to accelerate ecosystem adoption of the leading-edge solutions designed to make vehicles safer and smarter.”

The company offers a portfolio of automotive-grade solutions with reliability, fast boot times, high bandwidth, low power and a small footprint. Unlike many automotive-marketed solutions that are built for consumer devices, the firm’s automotive-grade products are ruggedized, built and optimized to meet demanding automotive standards through its process technology and product development. These automotive products are tested to provide the extreme stability, quality, thermal tolerances, reliability and longevity that the automotive market requires.

Micron’s solutions are qualified for range of Snapdragon Digital Chassis solutions that support range of AI-driven features:

• Snapdragon Cockpit Platform is designed for software-rich, personalized digital cockpits, supporting immersive audio, intelligent driving assistance and rich visual experiences across multiple displays. Equipped with high-performance computing and machine learning accelerators, the platform features multimodal generative AI capabilities and enables the development of digital cockpits that can intuitively adapt and evolve with driver needs and technological advancements.

• Snapdragon Ride Platform enables advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) features and supports a range of functionalities from basic parking assistance to higher levels of autonomy and technologies such as computer vision, complex AI networks, camera visualization, sensor fusion, lidar perception, automated driving maps and ultrasonic sensor processing.

• Snapdragon Ride Flex SoC is designed to support mixed-criticality workloads with central compute, integrating digital cockpit, ADAS and automated driving capabilities on a single chip. This centralization helps automakers achieve a unified software-defined vehicle architecture, paving the way for multimodal AI networks in automotive systems.

Micron’s automotive solutions will deliver benefits for Qualcomm’s automotive customers and the broader ecosystem:

• Automotive LPDDR5X is the memory solution for applications needing the fastest speeds and lowest power profile. It enables improved energy efficiency and performance for intelligent vehicles with increasingly bandwidth- and energy-hungry technologies such as AI-based autonomous driving features. Notably, it is backward-compatible for LPDDR5 speeds of 6.4Gb/s, which Qualcomm has qualified the memory for. With this qualification, Qualcomm’ latest-gen Snapdragon automotive SoCs are the 1st SoC family enabling the LPDDR5 interface.

• Automotive UFS 3.1 storage enables 2x faster read performance and a 50% improvement in sustained write performance,⁽¹⁾ enabling faster start-ups and over-the-air updates, more responsive launching of applications and an overall smoother user experience. This boost in speed brings the driver experience in line with the expectations of consumers who have little tolerance for latency while on the road, especially when accessing critical data such as directions from their digital cockpit.

• Xccela flash memory is one of the industry’s highest-performance NOR flash memories, delivering 5x the performance and reducing energy consumption by 3x.⁽²⁾ This capability enables instant-on performance and fast system responsiveness in automotive applications.

• Quad SPI-NOR flash delivers fast code execution and reliability for applications such as boot code and program code. This is critical for scenarios such as reliably booting up a vehicle’s digital cockpit and operating system as soon as a driver starts the engine, as code failure may result in cars being ‘bricked’ or rendered inoperable.

These firm’s solutions have been enabled in all the volatile and nonvolatile memory sockets of the latest generation Snapdragon Cockpit Platforms. The companies’ work builds on a long-standing working relationship that spans multiple generations of platforms between the 2 partners to bring immersive in-vehicle experiences to cars. With this qualification, the 2 companies together help the ecosystem build next-gen intelligent vehicles powered by sophisticated AI.

Used by leading automakers, the firm’s automotive solutions have accumulated trillions of miles on the road ⁽³⁾ over the company’s nearly 35 years in the automotive market. Micron’s expertise stems from tight collaboration with automotive customers on designing memory into evolving architectures underpinning automotive technologies.

This announcement complements the company’s unveiling of the Micron 4150AT SSD at Embedded World in Germany. Offering first-of-its-kind virtualization, and 4 customizable ports, the automotive-grade drive enables a new paradigm of centralized architectures for intelligent vehicles. Together, these launches extend Micron’s automotive leadership and better empower the automotive ecosystem to usher vehicles into a new era of intelligence at the edge.

⁽¹⁾ Over prior-generation UFS 2.1 devices
⁽²⁾ Compared to the page mode parallel NOR solution
⁽³⁾ Based on Micron’s calculations 

Resource:
Portfolio page Automotive memory and storage solutions