In October 2021, General Motors (GM) unveiled Ultra Cruise, an advanced driver assistance technology designed to enable door-to-door handsfree driving on all public paved roads in the U.S. and Canada.
Now recently, GM announced Ultra Cruise will be powered by a scalable compute architecture featuring system-on-chips developed by Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. With high performance sensor interfaces and memory bandwidth, the Ultra Cruise compute architecture will be key to helping Ultra Cruise achieve its ultimate goal.
GM will be the first company to use the Qualcomm Technologies’ Snapdragon Ride Platform for advanced driver assistance technology, which features two 5-nanometer Snapdragon SA8540P SoCs and one SA9000P artificial intelligence (AI) accelerator.
About the size of two laptops stacked together, the Ultra Cruise's compute will be available in 2023.
“Despite its relatively small size, Ultra Cruise’s compute will have the processing capability of several hundred personal computers,” said Ken Morris, GM vice president of electric, autonomous and fuel cell vehicle programs.
“We are very proud of our collaboration with General Motors on one of the industry’s first uses of our Snapdragon SoCs in an automated driving system,” said Nakul Duggal, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. senior vice president and GM, Automotive.
The Ultra Cruise compute will help power GM-developed ADAS software and features, including perception, planning, localization and mapping.
The computer also includes an Infineon Aurix TC397 processor to meet automotive system safety standards. The Aurix TC397 is categorized ASIL-D – the highest automotive safety integrity level.
As noted by GM, Ultra Cruise’s computer will have the capability to evolve over time by leveraging Snapdragon Ride’s SoCs performance and high-speed interfaces for future expansion, as well as over-the-air software updates enabled through the Ultifi software platform and GM’s Vehicle Intelligence Platform electrical architecture.
