Texas Instruments Unveils Advanced Chips to Enhance Vehicle Safety and Autonomy

Texas Instruments (TI) announced a new portfolio of automotive chips on Tuesday designed to advance vehicle safety and autonomous driving capabilities. The portfolio includes the industry's first integrated high-speed lidar laser driver, automotive bulk acoustic wave (BAW)-based clocks, and an enhanced millimeter-wave radar sensor.

The LMH13000, TI's integrated high-speed lidar laser driver, delivers an 800ps rise time that achieves up to 30% longer distance measurements than existing discrete solutions. This improved capability allows vehicles to detect obstacles more accurately and at greater distances, enhancing real-time decision-making. The driver's integration eliminates the need for large capacitors or additional external circuitry, reducing system costs by an average of 30% while decreasing solution size by four times.

"Our latest automotive analog and embedded processing products help automakers both meet current safety standards and accelerate toward a collision-free future," said Andreas Schaefer, TI general manager for ADAS and Infotainment.

The company also introduced the CDC6C-Q1 oscillator and LMK3H0102-Q1 and LMK3C0105-Q1 clock generators, which utilize BAW technology to increase reliability by 100 times compared to traditional quartz-based clocks. These components are designed to maintain performance despite temperature fluctuations, vibrations, and electromagnetic interference commonly experienced in automotive environments.

Additionally, TI unveiled the AWR2944P, a new millimeter-wave radar sensor that builds on the company's AWR2944 platform. The enhanced sensor extends detection range, improves angular accuracy, and enables more sophisticated processing algorithms through an improved signal-to-noise ratio, increased computational capabilities, and integrated radar hardware acceleration for machine learning applications.

The semiconductor industry has been working to address growing demands for advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) as automakers push toward greater vehicle autonomy. These systems require precise, reliable components that can perform in varied environmental conditions while remaining cost-effective enough for deployment across diverse vehicle models.

Lidar technology has emerged as a crucial component for autonomous vehicles, providing detailed three-dimensional mapping of surroundings. TI's integrated solution addresses previous limitations in size, cost, and temperature stability, with the LMH13000 showing only 2% variation in output current across its operating temperature range, compared to up to 30% variation in discrete solutions.

Preproduction quantities of all the new components are currently available for purchase, with additional output current options and an automotive-qualified version of the LMH13000 expected in 2026.

Texas Instruments, listed on Nasdaq as TXN, designs and manufactures analog and embedded processing chips for various markets including automotive, industrial, personal electronics, and communications equipment.