What began as something as simple as an electronic mechanism to raise and lower the window has evolved over time and today many cars are nothing more than computers with wheels whose experience differs from that of a conventional car. That is why APU or SoC manufacturers no longer only design for PCs and mobiles, but also for cars, as is the case with the new Samsung Exynos Auto V7.
The Internet of Things is based on all devices being connected to each other and the vast majority to the Internet, this includes cars that in recent years have integrated on-board computers with advanced hardware and Internet connectivity. Well, Samsung has just presented its new communication solutions for cars, Exynos Auto T5123, and more importantly, its new SoC as the main processor for vehicles, the Exynos Auto V7.
Samsung Exynos Auto V7
One of the functions of a smart car is the so-called infotainment, which consists of integrating the functions of a PostPC device in the vehicle and is also the central processor of the computer on board the car. And what does the Samsung Exynos V7 bring inside? Well to start 8 Cortex A76 cores to 1.5 GHz and one 11-core ARM Mali G76 GPU, which is responsible for transmitting the image to the various screens apart from the main panel, up to a total of four. Regarding the number of supported cameras in the car this SoC supports up to 12 of them.
Since we are talking about a SoC for a car this has to carry unique functions for these, the image signal processor supports technologies like wrong pixel correction, dynamic range compression and geometric distortion correction to convert the images captured by the cameras into images without noise and distortion of the environment around the car. And if you are one of those who like to thunder inside the car, Samsung has included 3 HiFi 4 audio processors for excellent sound quality. All accompanied by 32GB of LPDDR4X with a bandwidth of 68 GB / s.
Nor can we forget about security, which is key in these SoCs, that is why the Exynos Auto V7 has a safety processor isolated from other components for operations with sensitive data, whose master key is programmed only once at the factory and to which systems have been added to prevent it from being copied to an external device.
The first 5G modem for cars
In this case we find a communication module, which is composed of a SoC whose task is to grant 5G connectivity to our vehicle, which will allow us to access this network from anywhere and have the advantages of it. With its speed of 5.1 Gigabits per second, this is enough to provide passengers with services such as video on demand, video conferencing calls from anywhere, and even have traffic information updated in real time.
The SoC is composed of two Cortex-A55 cores, makes use of memory LPDDR4X, it communicates with the main processor of the on-board computer through a PCI Express interface and has an integrated global navigation satellite system. His availability? At the moment it is in production, but according to Samsung it will be the first time that we will see 5G in cars.
The third chip that Samsung has presented is the S2CPS01, which is a chip that manages energy in the on-board computer and with which Samsung has obtained the ISO 26262 of 2019 and the ASIL-B certification of 2021. That is, it is a PMIC and it is that we must bear in mind that energy management is an electric car is a very important element.
