2024 IC Industry Awards Announced: Axera Wins Automotive IC Innovative Product of the Year Award
According to ijiwei.com, on December 16, 2023, the “2024 Semiconductor Investment Annual Meeting and IC Industry Award Ceremony,” hosted by the Semiconductor Investment Alliance and organized by ijiwei, was held at the Kerry Hotel in Beijing. At the ceremony, Axera Semiconductor Co., Ltd. (or Axera) was honored with the “Automotive IC Innovative Product of the Year Award.”
The award is designed to acknowledge companies that shore up the industry’s weak spots, bridge gaps, or foster domestic alternatives, underscoring their crucial role in the self-sufficient and vigorous growth of China’s automotive chip sector.
Founded in 2019, Axera is dedicated to creating world-leading artificial intelligence (AI) perception and edge computing chips. The company focuses on serving the expansive edge and terminal markets, which include smart city, intelligent driving, robotics, and AR/VR applications. To date, Axera has successfully developed and mass-produced four generations of AI chips. Innovation and independent research have been at the heart of Axera’s growth. Its core technologies—the Axera Zhimou AI-ISP and Axera Tongyuan NPU—blend perception and computing seamlessly, laying a robust technological groundwork for the company’s endeavors.
The industry-leading Axera Zhimou AI-ISP leverages pixel-level AI processing technology to enhance imaging quality across various complex application scenarios, providing high-quality images and videos for subsequent intelligent processing. The Axera Tongyuan NPU employs a multi-threaded heterogeneous multi-core design, optimizing operators, network microstructures, data flow, and memory access. It efficiently supports mixed precision algorithm design and natively supports the Transformer architecture, laying a solid foundation for large model applications on edge and terminal devices.
Positioning itself as a Tier 2 supplier, Axera’s new automotive arm, XMOTIVE, aligns with a long-term goal of providing sustained value to the automotive industry. Offering a comprehensive set of solutions for front-view integrated systems, domain controllers for driving and parking, CMS, and DMS/OMS, XMOTIVE provides efficient and user-friendly toolchains, versatile software development platforms, and application-oriented reference designs tailored to diverse customer needs.
Leveraging Axera’s two self-developed core technologies, the brand has made significant strides along the smart driving chip track and has developed several product series to date. XMOTIVE’s M55H and M76H chips, along with its autonomous driving engineering platform, are suitable for L2-L4 autonomous driving solutions. These products cover over 90% of the market demand, from urban NOA (Navigate on Autopilot) and highway NOA to L2 assisted driving. The first automotive chip in the series, M55H, went into mass production and large-scale shipment in June 2023.
The M76H is an SoC (System-on-Chip) equipped with the third-generation Axera Tongyuan NPU, enabling it to function as a full-time domain controller for driving and parking. In terms of smart driving functions, it supports highway NOA and can replace existing multi-chip solutions on the market, allowing customers to quickly validate and develop their applications. Test data reveals that the M76H chip efficiently supports BEV (Bird’s Eye View) and Transformer algorithm models, enabling passive cooling and catering to both traditional fuel vehicles and NEV markets. The M76H chip is currently in the pre-mass production phase, with production-grade samples accessible. Anticipated to secure automotive-grade certification and commence mass production by early 2024, it will shift from part-time to full-time smart driving, delivering a fresh user experience. The best way to sum up the M76H is: “It facilitates the transition from part-time to full-time autopilot, rendering driving and parking effortless.”
The IC Industry Awards focus on the most strategically adept companies in China’s IC industry in the new era. The awards adopt comprehensive perspectives, including market, academia, investment, and brand, with selection criteria based on authority, innovation, growth, and sustainability. The winners are decided through voting by a jury comprising over 500 semiconductor industry CEOs from more than 100 member units of the Semiconductor Investment Alliance. These awards aim to encourage and recognize outstanding contributions and achievements in semiconductor technology innovation, product design and manufacturing, industry capital management and operations, formation of clusters in the upstream and downstream of the industry chain, and corporate financial performance, setting new benchmarks in the industry.
