In a partnership with Nvidia, chip manufacturer Mediatek plans to increasingly address the automotive market in the future. The Taiwanese company is taking an unusual approach: it is integrating AI and graphics chiplets into its automotive SoCs.
As the first step of an automotive roadmap that has yet to be worked out in detail, Mediatek is developing a family of chips for applications in the vehicle interior. These are devices that monitor driver and passenger behaviour and issue alerts when necessary. Monitoring the vehicle interior is also of great importance for the development of autonomous driving, because if a complex and potentially dangerous situation develops, the vehicle’s control electronics must hand over control to the driver – and to do this, it must “know” whether he or she is capable of doing so. This is a typical use case for AI – and that brings us to the collaboration between Mediatek and Nvidia.
Nvidia supplies chiplets to Mediatek to improve their own complex chips – in this case for AI applications. In addition, it is planned that Nvidia will also supply chiplets and know-how for high-performance graphics. The chiplets are connected to the main chip via an ultra-fast broadband interface. Mediatek intends to use the Nvidia chipsets to equip its “Dimension Auto” product family, a family of high-performance SoCs for use in various zone computers. Initially, a series for use in the cockpit is being planned. The task of these chips will be to process the data streams of several vehicle cameras, to drive high-resolution multi-display arrays and to decode or encode various video streams. Mediatek puts this application area at $12 billion worldwide – in the current year alone. Mediatek’s roadmap also envisages the future development of Dimension Auto chips for connectivity purposes, for use in ADAS and autonomous driving, with Nvidia contributing the appropriate AI chiplets and further know-how in each case. The Californian chip company intends to bring its cumulative expertise in high-performance computing, graphics and cloud computing for AI training to the partnership, explained Nvidia’s automotive boss Danny Shapiro.
With the offering, Mediatek aims to serve its automotive customers globally, including China, where a good portion of the production will go to. Neither Nvidia nor Mediatek wanted to reveal in which foundry the chips will be produced, but only a few contract manufacturers worldwide come into question.
Production start of the Mediatek Dimension Auto devices is scheduled for 2026, which will enable carmakers to integrate them into their vehicles from model year 2027 onwards.
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