Renesas Refocuses on Enhanced ADAS

The R-Car V4H is a new automotive system-on-chip for vehicles with extended ADAS capabilities. It addresses functional safety and the greater AI performance for Level 2+ driving.

Bryon Moyer

Chipmakers are reassessing which driving-automation levels to emphasize in the near term. Renesas is one example, having just announced a new system-on-a-chip (SoC) for midrange to high-end ADAS while stopping short of autonomous driving. Although not part of the official definitions, many in the industry refer to this range as Level 2+ (L2+) autonomy.

The R-Car V4H bulks up on the vision-processing capabilities of the prior R-Car V3H, offering dedicated blocks for specialized computer vision. Although it focuses on cameras, the chip allows input from other sensors. By adding a separate real-time section, Renesas addresses functional safety while providing additional CPU power for less critical functions.

The V4H improves AI performance, supporting greater fusion of sensor data and map information to produce a more detailed and precise view of a vehicle’s surroundings. Those algorithms can get help from sophisticated computer-vision blocks, each of which handles a specialized workload such as stereo vision or optical flow. These capabilities reinforce Renesas’s focus on cameras as the primary automotive sensor for these systems.

Although the V4H targets Level 2+, the company says the chip can be used for Level 3 vehicles, depending on the system requirements. To accommodate long automotive qualification cycles, the new chip targets vehicles entering production in 2Q24.