New Arm Technologies Enable Safety-capable Computing Solutions for an Autonomous Future

News Highlights:

• New solutions offer a step change in compute for autonomous systems in automotive and industrial automation, which Arm believes will be an $8 billion silicon opportunity in 2030
• Designed with safety first: Arm Cortex-A78AE is Arm’s highest performance CPU with safety, Arm Mali-G78AE is Arm’s first safety capable GPU, and Arm Mali-C71AE enables safety for vision use cases
• The new IP enables solutions for autonomous applications, supported by the Arm ecosystem, software and tools, Safety Ready technology, System IP and Physical IP

Cambridge, UK, September 29, 2020 – Today, Arm unveiled new computing solutions to accelerate autonomous decision-making with safety capability across automotive and industrial applications. The new suite of IP includes the Arm^® Cortex^®-A78AE CPU, Arm Mali^™-G78AE GPU, and Arm Mali-C71AE ISP, engineered to work together in combination with supporting software, tools and system IP to enable silicon providers and OEMs to design for autonomous workloads. These products will be deployed in a range of applications, from enabling more intelligence and configurability in smart manufacturing to enhancing ADAS and digital cockpit applications in automotive.

“Autonomy has the potential to improve every aspect of our lives, but only if built on a safe and secure computing foundation,” said Chet Babla, vice president, Automotive and IoT Line of Business at Arm. “As autonomous decision-making becomes more pervasive, Arm has designed a unique suite of technology that prioritizes safety while delivering highly scalable, power efficient compute to enable autonomous decision-making across new automotive and industrial opportunities.”

Cortex-A78AE: High performance in safety critical applications 

The new Arm Cortex-A78AE CPU is Arm’s latest, highest performance safety capable CPU, offering the ability to run different, complex workloads for autonomous applications such as mobile robotics and driverless transportation. It delivers:

• A 30% performance uplift compared to its predecessor.
• Supports features to achieve the relevant automotive and industrial functional safety standards, ISO 26262 and IEC 61508 for applications up to ASIL D / SIL 3.
• New enhanced Split Lock functionality (Hybrid Mode) to offer maximum flexibility. Hybrid Mode is designed to specifically enable applications that target lower levels of ASIL requirements without compromising performance and allow the deployment of the same SoC compute architecture into different domain controllers.

For more technical details on the Cortex-A78AE, visit our blog.

Mali-G78AE: Redefining safety for embedded GPUs, with flexible partitioning 

Mali is the number one shipping GPU worldwide, and the new Mali-G78AE is Arm’s first GPU to be designed for safety, delivering rich user experiences and heterogenous compute to safety-critical autonomous applications. The new Mali-G78AE enables:

• A new approach to autonomous GPU workloads with Flexible Partitioning, with up to four fully independent partitions for workload separation for safety use cases.
• GPU resources can now be utilized for safety-enabled human machine interfaces or for the heterogenous compute needed in autonomous systems. For example, an infotainment system, an instrument cluster with ASIL B requirements and a driver monitoring system can now all run concurrently and independently with hardware separation within an automotive application.

For more technical details on the Mali-G78AE, visit our blog.

Mali-C71AE: An evolution in ISP safety

Autonomous workloads need to be aware of their surroundings, often through cameras that must operate in a wide range of lighting conditions. To support a broad range of vision applications across automotive and industrial, the Mali-C71AE offers:

• The flexibility needed to support both human and machine vision applications such as production line monitoring and ADAS camera systems.
• Enhanced safety features, supports features to achieve ASIL B / SIL2 safety capability.
• Support for four real time cameras, or 16 buffered cameras, delivering a 1.2 giga pixel per second throughput.

For more technical details on the Arm Mali-C71AE, visit our blog.

Enabling the autonomous software ecosystem

As autonomous systems move towards more software-defined functionality, Arm is working to accelerate the development of software that will fully realize the benefits of these new technologies through initiatives such as Project Cassini, aimed at laying the foundation for the adoption of cloud native software paradigms across the entirety of edge computing. Arm is also working with multiple open source communities and specialist software vendors to widely enable the autonomous software ecosystem, adopting innovations from the established cloud native ecosystem, and collaboratively driving new development to support the features required for autonomous workloads.

Find out more about this at Arm DevSummit.

Supporting Partner Quotes

AImotive

“As a leader in AI-based automotive software, we are collaborating closely with Arm on software solutions for ADAS and autonomous driving. We are excited to see this next generation of Arm’s safety-engineered IP, helping deliver more deployable automated driving solutions and provide the foundational compute required for future automotive systems.” László Kishonti, CEO of AImotive

KUKA

“The future of smart manufacturing requires innovative automation solutions with compute capabilities that support the safe, flexible and seamless operation of factories. The Arm architecture is already powering some of our key industrial solutions, and we see Arm’s new technologies as a positive step towards enabling the safety and further development of robotics needed for industrial operations to move closer to true autonomy.” Michael Wagner, director, Competence Center Control Technology at KUKA.

NVIDIA

“Powerful new processing capabilities are needed to enable future autonomous vehicles and machines. As a lead partner for the new Arm Cortex-A78AE, NVIDIA delivers the advanced performance and safety these edge AI systems require with our next-generation NVIDIA Orin SoC.” Gary Hicok, senior vice president of hardware development at NVIDIA.

Volkswagen Group

“The requirements for higher levels of driver automation, electrification and immersive in-vehicle experiences are continually growing, and scalable, heterogenous, safe compute is critical in order to meet the requirements of future vehicle electronics systems. Innovation such as Arm’s new technologies and the extensive ecosystem that supports it will help to accelerate the deployment of next-generation vehicles.” Alexander Hitzinger, senior vice president for autonomous driving in the Volkswagen Group and CEO of Artemis.

Additional Resources

Read more about how Arm autonomous IP addresses developer needs in deploying next-generation autonomous systems on Arm Blueprint.