Qualcomm Integrates Cockpit, ADAS

Qualcomm’s Ride Flex SoC combines ADAS and cockpit applications, integrating workloads that have no safety criticality with those requiring ASIL B and ASIL D safety.

Bryon Moyer

Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon Ride Flex platform combines cockpit workloads and ADAS processing on a single chip. As the workloads have different safety implications, Flex supports virtual machines to keep tasks from interfering with each other. To date, it’s the only system-on-chip (SoC) to combine zero-criticality, Automotive Safety Integrity Level (ASIL) B, and ASIL D workloads.

As part of the Snapdragon Digital Chassis family, Ride chips address ADAS and autonomous driving while other Digital Chassis platforms serve communications, cloud services, and cockpit-only applications. The Flex series remains a Ride brand owing to its ASIL D ADAS coverage; it adds the cockpit domain.

Qualcomm defines “cockpit” to include not only the dashboard instruments and tell-tales (icon-like indicators in the dash) but also multimedia for in-vehicle infotainment (IVI), which isn’t strictly part of the cockpit and requires no ASIL level (formally noted as “QM” for “quality management”).

The display resolution requirements for the dash may be lower than those for watching movies in the back seat, but correct dash functioning is more important, earning ASIL B criticality for most of the tasks. These QM and ASIL B systems run alongside the ADAS ASIL D ones on Flex, supporting zonal architectures as well as designs in transition towards zonal.

Qualcomm withheld architectural details, saying it plans to slow-roll them over time. It’s building the chip in a 4nm process from an undisclosed foundry; samples are available this quarter targeting model-2025 vehicles that will hit the streets late 2024.