Intel announced a US$15.3 billion acquisition of Mobileye, the largest supplier in the automotive ADAS field. This is the largest acquisition to date in the automotive autonomous driving field. Intel CEO Brian Krzanich said the acquisition is akin to integrating "the eyes of a self-driving car with the intelligent brain that actually drives the car."
The biggest advantage of Intel's acquisition of Mobileye is that Mobileye, the autonomous driving software that accounts for more than 90% of the market, becomes its private property. Will the Wintel situation that occurred on PCs also appear in the field of autonomous driving, forming a monopoly market of Intel + Mobileye? The existing automotive ADAS processor chip suppliers can be said to have lost the only software vendors in the market to cooperate overnight. All automotive ADAS chip manufacturers will only have hardware in hand in the future, without software support or software upgrade support. It will undoubtedly be difficult to gain recognition from vehicle manufacturers.
If Intel takes away the Mobileye card, Qualcomm, TI, ADI, Nvidia, MTK and many other processor manufacturers will definitely be hurt. Very coincidentally, Xilinx announced the reVISION free machine vision development stack at almost the same time last night, which can provide customers with 80% of the functional embedded machine vision software. The cooperative solution company develops only 20% can be used for automatic driving, machine learning, etc. Overnight, in the long run, it seems that there are only two solution providers to choose from when it comes to autonomous vehicle solutions: Intel and Xilinx. Intel's acquisition of Mobileye seems sudden, but in fact Intel's series of acquisitions in the past, especially the multiple acquisitions in 2016, can be seen as its ambitions in the automotive electronics market.
In 2016, it acquired four automotive electronics-related companies, plus Mobileye, a giant in autonomous driving. In fact, with a market share of more than 90%, Intel has clearly occupied a place in automotive electronics. Intel and Mobileye are no strangers to each other. The companies have been working closely together for more than a year on the BMW/Intel/Mobileye platform and Delphi projects. Last week, Electronic Engineering Journal reporters attended Intel and Neusoft’s smart cockpit launch conference. Intel talked about its in-depth cooperation with Mobileye, which not only combines Mobileye’s advantages in autonomous driving software, but also includes Intel’s expertise in big data and cloud computing. exclusive advantages.
For existing automotive electronics ADAS chip suppliers, such as Qualcomm (Freescale), TI, ADI, NVIDIA, Toshiba, MTK, etc., Intel's acquisition of Mobileye will cause huge harm to their future software development. The only one that can be spared for the time being is ST. Mobileye's top executives reiterated in a letter to employees: "Mobileye's relationships with OEM customers, Tier 1 partners and STMicro, our EyeQ roadmap, and our aftermarket segment operate uninterrupted.
At 8 o'clock last night, Xilinx released reVISION, a machine vision and deep learning development stack that can be used for free by Zynq and MPSOC users. It is a very good news for friends who choose chip suppliers for automotive electronics and continue to follow up on ADAS and autonomous driving. Important news. How to respond to the market in a timely manner for terminal embedded machine recognition, rapid development, deep learning, neural networks and continuous software upgrades, Xilinx's reVISION should be a choice worth considering.
If Intel's acquisition of Mobileye has a great impact on existing ADAS technology development, then vehicle and automotive electronics solution developers must carefully select ADAS and smart driving development platforms based on their own or customer requirements.
The combination of Intel and Mobileye is very likely to lead to an exclusive partnership in both hardware and software in the automotive electronics market. OEMs can quickly obtain advantageous solutions, but being the only supplier will also force OEMs to reconsider subsequent supply chain management.
Mobileye's technology in autonomous driving is indeed very powerful, which is the main reason why it occupies such a large market share. According to Intel, more than 30 vehicles on the market are using Intel and Mobileye solutions, including BMW, Jaguar, Land Rover, Lexus and other brands. China's Hongqi sedan will also release solutions based on Intel and Neusoft in the first quarter of next year.
However, autonomous driving is a combination of machine vision, deep learning and neural networks, which requires continuous upgrade and development. Coupled with various localization requirements and different users' preferences for HMI human-machine interfaces, if there is only one supplier, differentiation will definitely be greatly reduced. Based on this, there should be more software development solution providers on the market.
With the development of automobiles to this day, they have become a completely market-oriented consumer product. High-end cars need a luxurious experience, while mid-range and low-end cars need to follow up in terms of functionality while also taking into account costs. Therefore, even when the so-called autonomous vehicle era arrives in 2020, the needs of autonomous driving will still be different. Whether the combination of Intel and Mobileye can overcome the cost barrier, judging from the characteristics of consumer electronics, there will definitely be no case where more than 90% of the market will be dominated by one company.
Then there is the development and safety certification of automotive electronics, which pays great attention to platform mobility and technology upgrades. How traditional automotive electronics manufacturers seize the trust of customers and make targeted counterattacks on the Intel+Mobileye platform is a major variable in the future of the market.
