Smart Driving for All: Why Axera's M76H Chip Is an Ideal Choice for Advanced Smart Driving
The Chinese auto market has recently seen rapid growth in the adoption of advanced smart driving features, with cutting-edge functionalities now available in vehicles priced as low as 100,000 yuan. This trend marks a significant step toward the democratization of smart driving technology. As these capabilities become standard across a broader range of vehicle segments, we are entering a new era where smart driving is affordable for everyday consumers.
As we move into 2025, major automakers' commitment to popularizing smart driving technology has created unprecedented opportunities across the supply chain.
At the heart of this transformation are smart driving chips—the brains behind these systems. Anticipating this trend, Axera has developed the M76H chip to enable mass production of mid to high-end smart driving solutions.
This M76H chip offers the following key advantages:
Technologically, it features forward-thinking algorithm architecture with native BEV + Transformer support, ensuring optimal compatibility with current smart driving algorithms.
It demonstrates exceptional power efficiency with thermal design power (TDP) under 10W at 125 °C junction temperature, enabling passive cooling for integrated driving-parking domain controllers suitable for both EVs and traditional vehicles.
Thanks to its innovative design, domain controllers developed with the M76H offer significantly lower costs compared to competing solutions in domestic and international markets.
Given these advantages, the M76H emerges as a compelling choice for smart driving chips in this era of “smart driving for all”.
Why is Axera's M76H an Ideal Choice?
As a chip innovator, Axera specializes in smart driving chips, the cornerstone of its automotive business. Our mission is to accelerate mass adoption of smart driving features across all vehicle segments. We believe smart driving technology should be universally accessible, regardless of whether you choose an EV or a traditional vehicle. This vision of democratizing smart driving solutions aligns perfectly with Axera's mission of "AI for All, AI for a Better Life."
While our flagship ADAS chip, the M55H, is already in mass production across multiple vehicle models, we've developed the M76H to address the mid to high-end smart driving market. The M76H is primarily deployed on integrated driving and parking domain controllers, featuring native support for BEV + Transformer architecture. This enables automakers to implement advanced features ranging from highway Navigate-on-Autopilot (NOA) and Automated Parking Assist (APA) to urban Intelligent Cruise Assist (ICA).
When automakers pursue “smart driving for all”, their chip selection criteria focus on three key factors: technological leadership, power efficiency, and cost effectiveness.
Now let's examine how the M76H excels in these areas as an ideal choice for mid to high-end smart driving applications.
- Technical Leadership
In terms of computing power, the M76H delivers robust performance with 60 TOPS NPU computing power and an integrated 8-core high-performance CPU, meeting the demanding perception and processing requirements of advanced smart driving systems.
The key strength of the M76H lies in its integration of Axera's proprietary technologies: the AXProton AI-ISP and AXNeutron mixed precision NPU.
The self-developed ISP delivers 4x8MP@30fps processing capability, with outstanding perception in challenging conditions including dark environments, HDR wide dynamic range, and hazy conditions, enabling enhanced scene clarity and accuracy.
The in-house developed NPU V3 architecture features a heterogeneous multi-core design that supports mixed-precision operations. Its high-performance tensor cores are optimized for convolutional neural networks (CNNs) and accelerate Transformer and BEV (Bird’s Eye View) applications, while flexible vector cores are specifically designed for efficient Transformer processing. The architecture also integrates SDMA and hardware-level coordination across heterogeneous cores, along with a rich set of CV operators for pre- and post-processing—together delivering a comprehensive boost to perception performance.
The M76H chip further delivers exceptional video ingestion and processing capabilities, supported by high-efficiency memory bandwidth and powerful AI computing performance to handle multiple high-resolution video streams concurrently. Its dual-core VQ7 DSP incorporates an instruction set specifically optimized for image processing and matrix operations, enabling accelerated radar signal processing and real-time SLAM (simultaneous localization and mapping). These capabilities collectively provide a complete, always-on integrated driving and parking system solution.
- Power Efficiency
Regarding the critical power consumption metrics for automotive-grade chips, the M76H achieves a TDP of less than 10W at 125 °C junction temperature. This enables passive cooling for integrated driving and parking domain controllers built with the M76H, optimizing costs while meeting the requirements of both traditional oil-powered vehicles and new EVs.
The M76H's passive cooling capability stands unique in the market, as competing chips typically require active cooling solutions. This achievement stems from Axera's extensive experience in chip design and mass production capabilities.
- Cost Effectiveness
The M76H chip primarily serves as a smart driving domain controller, working with vehicle sensor suites to enable features like highway NOA and APA.
The current mainstream solution is a 6V/7V single SoC integrated driving and parking system based on the M76H chip, natively supporting BEV + Transformer architecture while balancing high performance and cost effectiveness.
This solution offers:
4D BEV surround-view multiplexing: The M76H’s advanced NPU enables full-pipeline BEV operation with optimized efficiency. Its surround-view multiplexing capability addresses millimeter-wave radar blind zones, while constructing a temporally-fused 4D spatial model that compensates for pitch variations, enabling more accurate trajectory prediction.
Always-on integrated driving and parking system: It enables seamless transitions between driving and parking modes, enhancing end-user experience.
Passive cooling: It achieves less than 10W power consumption while delivering 60T computing power.
This integrated solution delivers substantial cost savings over current mainstream high-speed NOA domain controller solutions in China and beyond. Such cost effectiveness is pivotal to achieving "smart driving for all" and democratizing smart driving technology, particularly for automakers lacking vertically integrated supply chains. The solution stands as one of the most competitive enablers of smart driving accessibility in the market.
The M76H chip supports more than one smart driving system solution, including:
11V dual SoC omni-scenario smart driving system, supporting multi-sensor fusion for point-to-point smart driving, and flexible combos that can be configured as needed.
4. Intelligence Equality for Both ICE Vehicles and EVs
In advancing smart driving for all, internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles cannot be left behind.
ICE vehicles face two major challenges when implementing advanced smart driving: stable power supply and overall cost considerations. These challenges demand smart driving chips with low power consumption and high cost effectiveness.
As previously mentioned, the M76H chip-based smart driving solution stands out with its unique passive cooling approach and excellent cost control. For cost-sensitive ICE vehicles, selecting the M76H as the main control chip solves most challenges in creating an effective yet affordable advanced smart driving system, playing a crucial role in advancing intelligence equality between ICE vehicles and EVs.
However, is high performance, low power consumption, and optimal cost effectiveness enough for a smart driving control chip? Clearly not. Automotive-grade safety is a non-negotiable requirement for all automotive component suppliers—safety is the foundation of everything.
Axera's M76H chip received ASIL-B functional safety product certification from an international authority in early 2024, and the Axera team has also obtained ASIL-D functional safety process certification. Both product development and process management strictly follow rigorous automotive-grade requirements.
Overall, automakers and partners can confidently choose the M76H chip as the "brain" of their advanced smart driving systems. With innovative technology, excellent power management, outstanding cost effectiveness, and user-friendly tool chains, the M76H chip enables rapid vehicle deployment, truly making smart driving accessible to all.
A Two-Pronged Strategy: ADAS and Advanced Smart Driving Chips
L2 assisted driving systems, now in mass production, have become standardized with features becoming standard equipment driven by regulations. Axera's M55H chip and upcoming new ADAS chips fully meet this market's demands. The company is also actively expanding overseas, creating new market opportunities and bringing domestic automotive-grade chips to the international competitive arena.
In the advanced smart driving market, technology continues to evolve and scale expands. As more domestic OEMs show stronger interest in commercializing these functions, driving wider adoption and consumer acceptance, the market potential continues to grow. The M76H chip and upcoming more powerful chip products will better serve this market by providing a new cost-effective option:
Looking ahead, Axera's automotive business will focus on three core areas: strengthening its position in the ADAS market, expanding its advanced smart driving solutions, and exploring new applications for automotive chips.
