In a bid to carve out niches in global automotive chip market, Samsung Electronics has unveiled three brand new automotive chips – automotive modem chip Exynos Auto T5123, infotainment processor chip IVI (in-vehicle-infotainment) Exynos Auto V7 , and PMIC S2VPS01

The three chips are key crucial parts of today’s car systems, as cars are going digital, allowing car drivers to access Internet to enjoy multimedia contents using modems and application processor chips. As cars are coming built with more and more of electronics parts and components, demand for PMIC, or power management ICs are soaring, too.

Samsung want to bet on this car digitalization trend.  

Coming built with two ARM Cortex-A55 cores and GNSS (global navigation satellite system), the Exynos Auto T5123 is the first automotive modem chip that can support 5G mobile communications, allowing users to download upward of 5.1Gb data seamlessly on the road.

The GNSS makes so-called Telematics services available, enabling car drivers not only to receive real-time road traffic information, but also remotely diagnose car status, track locations of stolen or missing cars, and provide emergency call services.

The chip also supports high-speed data interface PCIe and high-performance low power mobile DRAM LPDDR4X. The modem got AEC-Q100 accreditation, which is the Automotive Electronics Council of the U.S-accredited quality assurance standard for automotive parts and components

Cars Go Digital

The Exynos Auto V7 is a sort of infotainment processor chip that is embedded in Volkswagen’s ICAS 3.1 infotainment system. LG Electronics modularized and supplied that system for the automaker.

Coming built with NPU, neural processing unit, the chip can process voice, movements, and facial recognition signals, enabling the car infotainment system to provide virtual secretary services.   

The chip also incorporates pixel noises and disrupted images correction technology as well as DRC, dynamic range correction image compression algorithm. Coming built with 3 Hi-Fi 4 audio processors, it allows users to enjoy movies, games, and music albums in the best sound quality. To perform such high performances, it supports LPDDR4X DRAM chips that provide 32GB storage spaces and data bandwidth of 64.3GB (gigabytes)   

The infotainment processor chip runs on eight 1.5GHz ARM Cortex A76 cores and eleven Mali-G76 GPU cores, supporting up to 4 displays and upward of 12 cameras.               

Of particular, its GPU is partitioned into 2 sub-sectors so that it can perform various applications like digital instrument cluster, center information displays, and head-up displays in separate and stable ways.

It also incorporates an independent security processor for data protection, securely storing OTP or one-time programmable data and providing PUF or physical unclonable function. 

The S2VPS01 is a sort of power management IC that is designed to deliver power to in-vehicle infotainment, or IVI system in precise and stable ways 

Especially, the S2VPS01 is accredited with ASIL-B, a sort of automotive system safety standard-leveling certification, a risk classification scheme defined by the ISO26262- Functional Safety for Road Vehicles Standard. The scheme assigns 4 levels – A, B, C, and D- depending allocation tables defined by the ISO 26262 standard, which measures and evaluates three main things ; the probability of exposure, severity, and the controllability of the actual system. ASIL d is the highest degree of automotive hazards, while the A is the lowest.