CES: Acquisition strengthens Intel’s hand in automotive

Intel also announced a new family of AI-enhanced software-defined vehicle (SDV) system-on-chips (SoCs), with Zeekr as the first original equipment manufacturer (OEM) to adopt the new SoC to deliver its generative AI-driven living room experiences to next-generation vehicles.

“Intel is taking a ‘whole vehicle’ approach to solving the industry’s biggest challenges. Driving innovative AI solutions across the vehicle platform will help the industry navigate the transformation to EVs,” said Jack Weast, vice president and general manager of Intel Automotive. “The acquisition of Silicon Mobility aligns with our sustainability goals while addressing a critical energy management need for the industry.”

Silicon Mobility SAS, a portfolio company of Cipio Partners and Capital-E, is a fabless automotive silicon and software company that designs, develops and deploys EV energy management SoCs. Silicon Mobility’s SoCs feature industry-leading accelerators purpose-built for energy delivery and co-designed with highly advanced software algorithms for significant gains in vehicle energy efficiency.

Silicon Mobility’s technology portfolio will extend Intel’s reach in the vehicle beyond high-performance compute into intelligent and programmable power devices. The acquisition is subject to necessary approvals.

The EV transition alongside customer demand for in-vehicle experiences fuels Intel’s strategy to enable the SDV. Intel also announced a commitment to deliver the industry’s first open UCIe-based chiplet platform for SDVs.

Intel will work with R&D powerhouse imec to ensure the packaging technologies meet the rigorous quality and reliability requirements of the automotive industry. Intel will also chair a new industry-defining international standard for EV power management.

The new family of AI-enhanced SDV SoCs (pictured) address a critical industry need for power and performance scalability. The family of SoCs feature AI acceleration capabilities from Intel’s AI PC roadmap to enable the most desirable in-vehicle AI use cases, such as driver and passenger monitoring.

A demo showed 12 advanced workloads – including generative AI, e-mirrors, high-definition video conference calling and PC games – running concurrently across multiple operating systems, including mixed critical use cases. The demo shows how automakers can consolidate legacy electronic control unit (ECU) architecture to improve efficiency, manageability and scalability – all while integrating their own custom solutions and AI applications.

“Intel’s AI-enhanced SDV SoCs combine the best of AI PC and Intel data centre technologies necessary to support a true software-defined vehicle architecture,” Weast said.