We have been receiving news that after becoming the king of the iPhone market. Apple is now planning to introduce its first car. According to the latest news by EETimes, the long-rumored Apple car may use the “C1” chip based on the A12 Bionic processor and has eyeballs. It also has tracking and other functions in-car AI functions.
Since Apple will need a chip foundry with automotive process capabilities, the report believes that both TSMC and Samsung may become Apple’s C1 chip suppliers. It is believed that TSMC has been developing a 7-nanometer automotive-grade process for some time, and Samsung has developed Exynos Auto V9 SoC automotive chips on its 8-nanometer process.
After understanding the limitations of the supplier, the report believes that C1 may be very similar to the design of the A12 Bionic chip that has been manufactured using a similar 7nm process and manufactured by TSMC.
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Tesla’s self-driving chip has 6 billion transistors and power consumption is 36W. Compared with the 6.9 billion transistors and 3.5W power consumption of Apple A12, there is still a certain gap. As it is on par with the existing automotive SoC, it is speculated that C1 will be based on A12 Bionic and then modified for specific automotive applications.
Knowing that Apple will authorize some technologies that cannot be designed by itself, such as Arm architecture technology and CPU cores, the report proposes that Apple will authorize some technologies for C1. The most important is the Occult NPU core from Seeing Machines, which will enable Apple to implement a large number of automotive artificial intelligence functions, such as driver eye-tracking.
There is still some debate about when Apple will be launched, and the speculated launch date will vary from 2024 to 2027. Nevertheless, reports surrounding Apple cars have increased significantly, indicating that the project is accumulating momentum, and Hyundai Motor recently confirmed that it is negotiating the production of Apple cars.
