Texas Instruments (TI), regarded as a powerhouse in analog and embedded semiconductors, is delivering results in the Autonomous Driving vehicle industry.
Founded in 1930, TI has posted clear results in analog chips that measure continuous signals such as voltage and temperature and in embedded semiconductors that control functions such as sensors and communications inside devices. About 80,000 products owned by TI are used by more than 100,000 corporations. Last year's revenue was $17.682 billion (about 26.164 trillion won), 95% of which came from the analog and embedded chip businesses.
TI launched automotive semiconductors early this year, developed by consolidating the technology it built up in analog and embedded chips. TI said, "Customers that adopt our products will be able to reach 'Autonomous Driving level 3 (L3)' with ease," adding, "By touting the ability to deliver high performance at low power, we have recently secured a range of new customers, and we are seeing results in terms of market penetration." L3 corresponds to "conditional Autonomous Driving," a technology level in which the driver intervenes only in specific situations and the vehicle drives itself for most segments.
According to market research firm Stratview Research, the Autonomous Driving semiconductor market TI has entered is projected to grow from $67.2 billion (about 100 trillion won) last year to $134.32 billion (about 199 trillion won) in 2032.
◇ "Industry-leading power efficiency"
TI's Autonomous Driving solution lineup consists of: ▲ TDA5 high-performance system-on-chip (SoC) ▲ 4D imaging radar transceiver (product name AWR2188) ▲ Ethernet physical layer (in-vehicle communications that transmit data generated by Autonomous Driving vehicle sensors; product name DP83TD555J-Q1 10BASE-T1S). Each plays the role of the brain, eyes, and neural network in an Autonomous Driving vehicle.
Mark Ng, TI's head of automotive systems, cited "industry-leading power efficiency" as the differentiator of the TDA5 family in a recent written interview with ChosunBiz. "The TDA5 family is a new solution from TI, which has more than 20 years of experience in automotive processing," he said, adding that it was developed with a focus on scalability, safety, and efficiency. He added, "The biggest advantage of the TDA5 chip, which serves as the brain in Autonomous Driving vehicles, is that it can process computations quickly with little power."
The TDA5 chip's operations per second reach up to 1,200 trillion (1,200 TOPS; 1 TOPS is 1 trillion operations per second). It supports 24 TOPS per watt (W). "Today, automakers often need to consume more than 150W to achieve 400 TOPS of artificial intelligence (AI) computation," Ng said. "TI's chip can run 400 TOPS at under 50W." He added, "It can handle AI tasks faster with less power than competing solutions," and "By reducing power and cooling requirements, it helps customers implement advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) more easily."
To achieve the low-power, high-performance TDA5 chip, TI integrated its Neural Processing Unit (NPU) product C7. This improved AI compute performance by up to 12 times over the previous generation. The manufacturing process uses 5 nm (nanometers; one-billionth of a meter) with automotive certification. Built on UCle (an open standard interface for efficiently connecting and communicating between chiplets within a single package), the chip supports chiplet design (a technology that divides high-performance semiconductor functions into multiple parts for manufacturing and then combines them), enabling customized applications for customers.
Ng said, "The TDA5 chip supports large language models (LLMs), vision-language models (VLMs), and advanced transformer networks with billions of parameters," adding, "It can scale flexibly from Autonomous Driving L1 to L3."
TI also offers a virtual development kit, in collaboration with Synopsys, to boost customers' development efficiency. With development tools that include a digital twin (a concept that precisely reproduces the real world in a digital space to run simulations), customers can test how TDA5 can be integrated into their products without a vehicle. TI described it as "a feature that can help shorten the time to market for software-defined vehicles (SDVs) by up to 12 months."
◇ "Doing our best to support Korean customers developing Autonomous Driving technology"
A variety of functions have also been added to the products that serve as the "eyes" and "neural network" of Autonomous Driving vehicles. TI applied an analog-to-digital converter (a device that converts physical signals into data) and a radar chirp signal slope engine (a technology that calculates the rate of change in radar-transmitted signals to measure distance more accurately) to this radar transceiver, improving performance by up to 30% over previous products.
As a result, it can detect objects more than 350 meters away. It has high enough resolution to distinguish two nearby vehicles or spot small objects on the road. With eight transmitters and eight receivers (8x8) provided in a single LOP (an antenna technology with package-direct connection), it enables a high-resolution radar system without adding separate devices to the vehicle, simplifying vehicle design.
"The newly released transceiver, using 4D imaging technology, enables a vehicle to detect where an object is, how tall it is, and how quickly it is moving away or approaching," Ng said. "Many sensors struggle to measure accurately in adverse weather such as fog and rain or at night, but TI's transceiver is radar-based and operates consistently in all weather conditions." He added, "It provides stable performance in challenging scenarios, such as early detection of highway hazards and detecting dropped cargo or objects in high dynamic range (HDR) environments."
Signal transmission speed is cited as one of the key factors in implementing Autonomous Driving vehicles. Ng offered this analogy for Ethernet's role: "Imagine you are riding a bicycle and a ball rolls toward you. Your eyes detect the ball and send this information to the brain. The brain, upon receiving the signal, decides you should stop. It sends the command 'grab the brake' through the nerves, and your hands and feet execute it. TI's sensing, networking, and processing technologies implement this sequence in Autonomous Driving vehicles."
TI's Ethernet supports synchronization at the nanosecond level (one-billionth of a second). It boosts performance by embedding a media access controller (MAC; a function that manages data transmission order and collisions) in the serial peripheral interface (SPI; a communication method for exchanging data between chips). "The moment the radar detects an obstacle, that information is delivered instantly to the central chip (TDA5) so the vehicle can respond in real time," Ng said.
Ng said the TDA5 family has been launched in multiple markets, including Korea, and is gradually spreading. "TI solutions are designed to be deployed in global markets, including Korea," he said. "Korea is an important market for TI, and we are doing our best to support Korean customers who are developing next-generation Autonomous Driving technology."
He concluded, "TI's core value is the passion to make the world better by offering electronic products at reasonable prices through semiconductors," adding, "That passion is fully reflected in the TDA5 family, which, despite its high technical reliability, is offered at a low price while reducing power consumption."