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had no experience with them.
However, it wasn't just the case of
taking existing vision algorithms and
characterizing them for automotive
reliability requirements. Another
transformation was under way that
added a new ingredient to the mix:
vision processing, such as recognizing
street signs or pedestrians, moved
from algorithmic approaches to deep
learning approaches in the space of
a few years. If you have read the
book Blue Ocean Strategy, this was
a blue ocean that created itself. In
some sense, there are no market
leaders. The historic market leaders in
automotive semiconductors have the
relationships with the OEMs and Tier-
1s. The foundries and IDMs have the
advanced processes. Various small
companies have bits and pieces of the
sensor fusion and vision processing.
Another wrinkle was that ISO 26262
appeared in 2011 and gradually
worked its way into everyone's
consciousness. But there were no
incumbents to be displaced, it was
the start of a new era. What would be
important going forward was not the
same as what had been important in
the past.
Qualcomm, NXP, Intel,
Mobileye, NVIDIA
It is early but there is jockeying for
position. Qualcomm is acquiring
NXP, which was the market leader
in automotive semiconductors and is
itself fresh from digesting Freescale.
On paper, that makes Qualcomm
the market leader, but only in
old-style automotive. Of course
they have more experience with
communication interfaces, especially
5G, than pretty much anyone. Intel
is acquiring Mobileye for $15B. They
are a manufacturing powerhouse
at the leading edge, they have
cellular modem technology, and now
they will have the current leader in
vision processing for automotive.
Intel publicly admits that it "missed
mobile" and it is clear that it doesn't
want to make the same mistake in
automotive. Another leader is NVIDIA
with their DRIVE platform. When it
was clear that they were not going
to be among the winners in mobile—
Qualcomm and Mediatek had all the
prizes—NVIDIA redirected all those
resources to automotive. Of course,
they already have a lot of experience
with deep learning since their GPUs
power a lot of the training phase.
Being the early leader isn't always
decisive, it's the second mouse that
gets the cheese, but it is hard to enter
a market once the players have been
established. We seem to be at that
phase right now and it may already
be too late for a new semiconductor
player to enter the market with any
chance of success against Intel/
Mobileye, Qualcomm/NXP/Freescale,
NVIDIA, Renasas, and others who are
already in the race.
Linley Autonomous
Hardware Conference
To me, the story of Linley Autonomous
Hardware Conference was not some
48 l New-Tech Magazine Europe