MediaTek Dives Into Cars, Head-End First

The smart automobile gold rush is on. MediaTek, the best of the 'fast follower' chipmakers constantly chasing Qualcomm's say-so of the smartphone space, just appear that information technology'south not only developing chips for smart cars: information technology's going deep.

Nextcar Bug art The company isn't announcing whatsoever specific chipsets, instead it's all virtually its broad strategy. First, it'll whorl out some chips for infotainment and telematics solutions, the sort of in-dash and in-seat stuff yous run into in today's cars. Those will probably employ Mediatek'due south low-cost, low-ability smartphone chipsets, the kind of things we've been seeing in a lot of recent Android tablets and smartphones.

"Nosotros take a longer-term vision and focus on the major tendency towards autonomous driving systems," said MediaTek Full general Managing director for Corporate Sales, Finbarr Moynihan. "We'll have new developments around sensors and vision-based systems; nosotros'll also have a longer-term focus on vision data."

MediaTek has been talking to car makers for well-nigh two years, Moynihan revealed, gauging what they need. Thius, opportunities accept opened upwards even equally potential vendors shrink, back abroad or consolidate; he pointed to Marvell and NVIDIA as two companies that accept downgraded their mobile capabilities in the past few years.

On the other hand, MediaTek has kept smartphones and modems every bit its core business. As a consequence, information technology can provide integrated solutions with processors, vision systems, and multi-fashion modems, much like Qualcomm and Intel can.

"MediaTek enabled over a billion consumer electronics product chipset solutions last twelvemonth, a level of scale we believe is required to bulldoze some of the more advanced technologies forwards. At that place's a calibration play here that MediaTek has, an attribute that nosotros can fully leverage on," he added.

What's in the 2022 Car?

MediaTek'southward 2022 automotive plan looks tied to two big concepts: computer vision and 5G.

The company is developing a special 'vision processing unit' that will "handle big amounts of real-time streaming information, making it more than comparable to man controlling performance." That'll exist tied to millimetre wave radar, a system that tin exist used at short distances for parking assist and at longer distances to foreclose the car from colliding with things on the road.

While it's moving into cars, different NVIDIA, Mediatek doesn't intend to dorsum away from mobile devices, Moynihan shared. "This is an additive," he noted. "We'll continue all the stuff we've been doing on mobile and home with consumers."

Moynihan said that MediaTek will make more specific announcements at CES in early Jan.