Qualcomm unveils Snapdragon Elite platforms for automotive

Qualcomm unveiled its Snapdragon Elite platforms for automotive applications at its Snapdragon Summit event today.

Powered by Qualcomm Oryon — the company’s fastest central processing unit (CPU) — these new platforms are the latest additions to the Snapdragon Digital Chassis (first introduced in 2022) portfolio.

They’re designed to bring intelligence to next-generation vehicles. Automakers have the option to
utilize Snapdragon Cockpit Elite to power advanced digital experiences and Snapdragon Ride
Elite to power automated driving capabilities.

Through its unique flexible architecture, automakers will also have an option to seamlessly combine both digital cockpit and automated driving functionalities on the same SoC – an innovative capability available on Snapdragon Digital Chassis solutions.

“Qualcomm Technologies remains at the forefront of innovation with platforms like Snapdragon Cockpit Elite and Ride Elite, as the automotive industry evolves towards centralized computing, Qualcomm
software defined vehicles and AI-driven architectures,” said Nakul Duggal, group manager, automotive, industrial, and cloud at Qualcomm, in a statement. “With our strongest performing compute, graphics and AI capabilities, coupled with industry leading power efficiency and cutting-edge software enablement for digital cockpits and automated driving, these new Elite Snapdragon automotive platforms address the industry’s needs for higher compute levels, empowering automakers to redefine automotive experiences for their customers.”

Ana Arnold, who works in product and technology marketing at Qualcomm, said in a product briefing that software-defined technology and AI are driving rapid change in cars. She noted hundreds of millions of vehicles already use Qualcomm tech on the road. The new platforms deliver versatility for both autonomous driving and in-cabin car systems — or both through platforms that combine the different chips, Arnold said.

Unified architecture with higher AI performance

The dedicated Neural Processing Unit (NPU), designed for multimodal AI, offers a 12-times performance boost over previous cockpit platforms, enabling real-time external environment and cabin data processing.

This advance facilitates live decision-making, adaptive responses, and proactive assistance, ensuring
personalized in-cabin car experiences.

Mark Granger, senior director of product management, said in a press briefing that the Snapdragon Cockpit Elite is focused on the interior cabin space, like the dashboard. The Snapdragon Ride Elite, meanwhile, is focused on ADAS, or Advanced Driver Assistance Systems, and autonomous vehicles.

“We see the advent of large language models and multimodal models that are adept at running on the edge,” Granger said. “So we’re very excited with what we see as a huge leap in performance and capability.”

To date, LLMs have had real challenges understanding and responding to to Chinese and Japanese speakers. The new tech can now address this. Granger said the company is not yet disclosing the exact amount of TOPS performance when it comes to AI processing.

Equipped with transformer accelerators and vector engines, along with mixed precision support, the NPU in Snapdragon Ride Elite is designed to deliver low-latency, highly accurate, and efficient end-to-end transformers, maintaining optimal power and performance.

The heterogeneous platform seamlessly runs multiple applications without performance loss, offering exceptional concurrency and multitasking for numerous cameras, sensors, rich user experiences and advanced AI-enabled audio with virtualization.

Automakers can create configurable software-defined vehicles (SDVs) for all tiers, providing flexibility and scalability while simplifying vehicle architecture. This architecture results in accelerated deployment schedules, ensuring customers can enjoy the latest innovations and features more quickly than before.

Qualcomm said the new chips are engineered to deliver exceptional performance while minimizing energy consumption. That helps ensure that vehicles operate smarter and longer. The solution is a combination of intelligent power management hardware and software that balances core utilization and application runtime.

The chips are also designed for context-aware applications. This platform is designed to enable hands-free, unsupervised automated driving that anticipates needs, along with real-time driver monitoring and enhanced object detection for a smoother, more confident ride.

Its improved Adreno GPU targeting to deliver a three-times performance boost with advanced rendering capabilities, meeting demands for gaming, multimedia, and dynamic driver information.

The platforms are also designed to meet automotive safety standards for ASIL-D systems with a dedicated safety island controller and robust hardware architecture for isolation and interference-free operation, helping to ensure reliable quality-of-service for specific ADAS functions, as well as comfort and confidence from drivers and passengers.

Purpose-built for the industry’s shift to SDVs, the elite-tier platform is designed to take an end-to-end approach for enhanced safety, security, and upgradeability through the unified software framework that emphasizes software reuse; designed to help automakers accelerate feature development via a cloud-based workbench, streamlining software development for continuous improvement and reducing time to market for new features and services.

The automotive platforms also feature a powerful, efficient camera system with an advanced Image Signal
Processor (ISP) for clear, responsive visuals in extreme driving conditions. They support over 40 multimodal sensors, including up to 20 high-resolution cameras for 360-degree coverage and in-cabin monitoring, Arnold said. She noted in-cabin sensors are now important inside the cabin to detect whether a driver is sleepy or not and the car needs to do something about that, like sending an audio alert.

Compatible with the latest and upcoming automotive sensors and formats, our platforms use AI-enhanced imaging tools to deliver optimized image quality for both enhanced in-cabin experiences and advanced safety features.

The automotive platforms will use Qualcomm’s software stack, supporting multiple operating systems. The Snapdragon Ride Elite platform is an end-to-end automated driving system with advanced features like vision perception, sensor fusion, path planning, localization, and complete vehicle control.

Snapdragon Cockpit Elite offers support for rich multimedia features, on-device AI with fully integrated edge orchestrator, optimized gaming and advanced 3D graphics for rich user experiences, and comes with safety, security and long-term support (API compatibility) features built into the design.

The Snapdragon Cockpit Elite and Snapdragon Ride Elite will be available for sampling in 2025. As for the average cycle time on design cycles for cars, Granger said the time has certainly come down over many years (it used to take five years to get new parts designed into cars) and continues to accelerate, Granger said.