This blog post was originally published at Qualcomm’s website. It is reprinted here with the permission of Qualcomm.
The Qualcomm Oryon CPU and the Snapdragon Elite name make its way to the automotive space, signaling its importance to Qualcomm
Snapdragon Summit 2024 shifted gears on Tuesday and moved from the mobile world to the automotive one in a big way. Nakul Duggal, group general manager of automotive, industrial and cloud for Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., unveiled two new platforms in Snapdragon Cockpit Elite and Snapdragon Ride Elite.
As with yesterday’s Snapdragon 8 Elite announcement, Qualcomm Oryon CPU will power these platforms, giving them the performance capable of helping automakers realize their vision of the future of automobiles. “We’re all experiencing the transformation of the car,” Duggal said on stage in Maui. “They’re more connected than ever.”
Automotive taking center stage at Snapdragon Summit for the first time underscores the increasingly important role the business plays in the company, and our opportunity to help forge tomorrow’s driving experience and the vision of a software-defined vehicle (SDV).
For Day 2’s events, Qualcomm Technologies seeded the grounds with advanced Snapdragon-powered vehicles, making for an unusual scavenger hunt of innovative auto experiences. The keynote was capped off with a special guest and discussion about how Qualcomm Technologies is contributing to innovation in Formula One racing, part of our multi-year agreement with Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1.
Here are the biggest stories from Day 2 of the conference:
Qualcomm Oryon will power the next auto experience
The Qualcomm Oryon CPU once again played a central role at Snapdragon Summit, with our fastest central processing unit powering both Snapdragon Cockpit Elite, which boasts premium in-vehicle experiences, and Snapdragon Ride Elite, which offers advanced features and automated driving capabilities.
Qualcomm Oryon is targeting three times faster CPU performance and up to 12 times stronger artificial intelligence (AI) performance for enhanced vehicle experiences compared to the previous flagship generation.1
Snapdragon Cockpit Elite has an incredible ability to multitask, powering multiple applications for the driver and passengers without a slowdown. The Qualcomm Adreno GPU is designed to provide immersive experiences through large infotainment screens, all-digital mirrors and more.
“Snapdragon Cockpit Elite is designed for an AI-first experience,” Duggal said.
Snapdragon Ride Elite will be able to take advantage of the Qualcomm Oryon CPU, GPU and the neural processing unit to handle parallel AI workloads, such as taking in data from multiple sensors and cameras. The result is an ability to both relay valuable information to the driver while handling real-time decisions to slow down to help avoid a collision.
Both Snapdragon Cockpit Elite and Snapdragon Ride Elite are part of the Snapdragon Digital Chassis Solution, which is a portfolio of chipset technologies that are empowering automakers to take their current and concept vehicles to the next level.
The way Qualcomm Oryon CPU is being used in Snapdragon Cockpit Elite and Snapdragon Ride Elite — and how different its applications are from Snapdragon 8 Elite and Snapdragon X Elite — show how flexible the CPU is and how Qualcomm Technologies has made it a powerhouse in so many different ways.
Qualcomm Technologies and Google extend their automotive collaboration
Qualcomm Technologies and Google have long been allies in building out the future of the vehicle experience and on Tuesday announced a multi-year collaboration aimed at advancing digital transformation.
The companies will tap into the Snapdragon Digital Chassis, Android Automotive OS, Google Cloud and Gemini Nano to create a reference platform for the development of in-vehicle capabilities using generative AI.
“The industry is in a new era and to realize the incredible promise of AI and the future of software-defined vehicles, partnership is required,” said Gretchen Effgen, director of global automotive partnerships at Google. Speaking on stage, she stressed this work was about “openness, collaboration and shared progress.”
She also talked about how their work together would combine voice assistant capabilities, car sensors, real-time mapping — the best from both Google and Qualcomm Technologies — to allow vehicles to proactively anticipate the needs of the driver and passengers.
“This extension of our long-standing collaboration allows us to provide our ecosystem of partners with even more tools to innovate,” Duggal added during his keynote.
The vision for software-defined vehicles is coming into focus
All these announcements help propel the automotive industry toward making SDVs more of a reality. An SDV can take an end-to-end approach to upgradeability by utilizing a unified software framework.
The idea is that features and capabilities in the car (think a customizable dashboard experience for an individual or a new AI capability that handles changing lanes) can be delivered to a car both before and after it’s been purchased. This dynamic — similar to you downloading an app to your smartphone — turns vehicles into nimble and fluid platforms that can change quickly as new innovations emerge.
In his keynote, Duggal talked about how the shift to cloud-native, software-defined development empowers automakers “to introduce new features, functionalities and services into the car with ease.” Premium experiences such as intuitive digital assistance, immersive infotainment and enhanced safety, Duggal adds, “offer something for everyone, experiences that can be scaled across different types of vehicles to meet the expectations of a wide variety of consumers.”
For automakers, this dynamic will allow them accelerate deployment and testing cycles, while providing flexibility and scalability across a diverse fleet of cars.
AI in automotive
AI is going to be a part of what we’ll be talking about on Day 3, but it still played a central role when discussing what kinds of innovations we’ll see in cars.
Toto Wolff, CEO of Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 Team, joined Duggal and Qualcomm Chief Marketing Officer Don Maguire for a fireside chat to talk about innovation in the racing world and, naturally, the conversation drifted towards AI.
“Engineers will always say the weakness in the car sits behind the steering wheel and the engine,” he said, a lighthearted jab at drivers that elicited a reaction from the crowd. He noted that 80% of the 2,500 employees are engineers and he called the two race cars “scientific projects.”
While the driver side of the equation is hard to simulate, there are so many other factors that can be quantified with sensors. Working with AI to “create more reliable and correlative results will be a step toward change in Formula One,” he said.
Zuomin Wu, head of strategic sourcing and purchasing at Li Auto, also took the stage to talk about the Chinese automaker’s electrification of modern vehicles and their ongoing collaboration with Qualcomm Technologies. Wu showcased their AI assistant, called Li Ziang Tong Xue, and its ability to engage passengers thanks to their own large language model, Mind GPT.
The moment struck an emotional chord with the crowd with its example of what happened when a young girl asked Li Xiang Tong Xue why time moves quickly. The surprisingly philosophical answer, coming from a car, elicited a silent, but stirring reaction — particularly for parents in the audience — and was a testament to Li Auto’s mission to “create a mobile home” and “create happiness.”
More and more we’re learning about how automotive chipsets are differently designed — and have to be differently designed — from PCs and mobile. And it strikes me today that all of these things now have the Qualcomm Oryon CPU, but they all use it so differently.
PC Qualcomm Oryon cores, two forms of mobile Qualcomm Oryon cores, automotive Qualcomm Oryon cores — they give all of these platforms far more computing power than they had before, but each of them is very customized to their specific platform. Nothing’s cookie-cutter.
What you didn’t see
Snapdragon Summit has taken over an entire property, and by Day 2, the crowd was dug in. At a “Snapdragon Store” in the corner of the lobby, there are more than a dozen laptop models lined up — each with a QR code letting you click to buy — as well as a tasting bar of exotic phones, including an Asus ROG Phone 9 running the new Snapdragon 8 Elite.
The hotel’s former game room became the press room. It’s full of arcade games and foosball, but when we went to check midday, zero press were playing games — they were heads down getting their stories in by deadline. Conference rooms filled with groups from around the world, grilling executives on the two days’ worth of announcements.
Down on the lawn, press and analysts got to tour vehicles from Mercedes, BMW, Chevrolet and more to experience how their innovations are enabled by Snapdragon platforms. The Rivian R1s used Snapdragon and Unreal Engine to simulate famous in-vehicle interfaces from TV and movies, while Great Wall Motor’s motorbike powered by Snapdragon took the automotive smarts to a two-wheeled vehicle.
Hopefully, the press took some time to relax and unwind after dinner. If you aim a Snapdragon phone at the stars by the pool — which I did, at 10 pm last night — you see far more stars than you can in most places on the mainland.
More to come on Day 3
It was hard to top a busy Day 1 (check out the recap here), but the audience was energized by all the Day 2 announcements. From the in-depth discussion of future infotainment systems and self-driving cars to all the Formula One racing talk, there was plenty to process. But there’s still one more day left, and we can’t wait for our in-depth AI discussion. Stay tuned.
References:
- All performance targets are compared to previous generation, based on preliminary internal testing, and subject to change upon final validation. Snapdragon Cockpit Elite and Snapdragon Ride Elite will be available for sampling in 2025.
Sascha Segan
Senior Manager, Public Relations, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc.
