New global consortium to develop common computing platform for autonomous vehicles

Leading companies from the automotive and computing industries announced a collaborative effort toward making fully self-driving vehicles a reality. The new Autonomous Vehicle Computing Consortium (AVCC), officially launched at Arm TechCon in San Jose, brings together industry leaders from automotive, automotive supply, semiconductor and computing to serve as the leading organisation for autonomous computing expertise.

Together with the consortium’s growing membership, the initial AVCC members Arm, Bosch, Continental, Denso, General Motors, Nvidia, NXP Semiconductors and Toyota will collaborate to help solve some of the most significant challenges to deploy self-driving vehicles at scale.

The first step toward achieving this vision and the common objective of AVCC is to develop a set of recommendations of a system architecture and a computing platform that reconciles the performance requirements of autonomous systems with the vehicle-specific requirements and limitations in terms of size, temperature range, power consumption and safety. These recommendations will be specially developed to move autonomous vehicles from today’s prototype systems to deployment at scale.

The companies understand the technological complexities and obstacles to overcome for the deployment of autonomous vehicles. They aim to work together to enable solutions that address these challenges and create an ecosystem of industry experts to focus on innovations that to meet these goals. As per the collaboration, working groups will share ideas and study common technological challenges, facilitating cross-industry collaboration to help the automotive industry work together by defining, educating and publishing for the benefit of all.

Dipti Vachani, senior vice-president and general manager, Automotive and IoT Line of Business, Arm: “The future of mobility and the safe, scalable deployment of advanced driver assistance systems to fully autonomous vehicles for mass production requires unprecedented industry collaboration. The AVCC brings together leaders from across the automotive industry landscape to tackle complex foundational technological and computing challenges to accelerate our path to a truly autonomous future.”

Michael Meier, director of engineering and product management, Drivers Assistance and Automated Driving, Bosch: "As well as the development of hardware, there is a large and sophisticated autonomous vehicle software stack required.  As part of the AVCC, Bosch will help to develop recommendations for software APIs for each building block in an autonomous system.”

Takuya Fukushima, AVCC board member, AD & ADAS Electronics Engineering Division, Denso: “Denso is looking forward to creating a shared platform to focus innovation as part of the AVCC. The consortium brings together expertise, knowledge and innovation with a shared goal and focused strategy. It will facilitate and manage workgroups to share ideas and study common technological challenges.”

Massimo Osella, AVCC chairman of the board, and lab group manager, Research & Development at General Motors: “The massive amount of technological innovation required to power fully self-driving vehicles at scale requires collaboration at an industry level. We are delighted to join this group of key leaders in the automotive industry. As the AVCC, we are working together to create the ’go to‘ organisation for autonomous computing expertise to help bring this technology to market.”

Gary Hicok, senior vice-president of Automotive Hardware and Software Systems at Nvidia: “The hardware and software requirements for autonomous vehicles are enormous, requiring an energy-efficient, high-performance AI platform to process sensor data and achieve the highest levels of safety. As the leader in AI computing, we are working closely with transportation innovators, tackling the complexities of developing and deploying safe autonomous vehicles at scale.”

Kamal Khouri, vice president and general manager of Advanced Driver Assistance Solutions at NXP Semiconductors: “The path to delivering autonomous vehicles is long and complex. NXP welcomes the opportunity to work with the AVCC to define the computing architectures needed to help solve the huge challenge of deploying safe self-driving vehicles.”

Satoru Taniguchi, AVCC board member, and project general manager, Electronics Control System Development Division at Toyota Motor Corp: “The AVCC understands the technological complexities and obstacles that need to be overcome for the deployment of autonomous vehicles. Toyota aims to work with the other AVCC members to deliver a conceptual computing platform that addresses these challenges.”

AVCC calls on all interested parties, and members of the automotive ecosystem worldwide to accept the challenge to build the future of the industry one milestone at a time, one breakthrough at a time while sharing with the technical community each one of those important advances.