San Jose, Calif., —January 5, 2015—Altera Corporation (NASDAQ: ALTR) today announced that its SoC field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) have been selected for use in Audi’s advanced driver assistance system (ADAS) targeted for mass production. Audi, a self-driving car technology leader, and Austrian high-tech company TTTech, the core-development partner for Audi’s central driver assistance control unit zFAS, chose the Altera® Cyclone® V SoC FPGA for its ability to increase system performance and enable the differentiated features Audi requires for piloted driving and parking not available with application specific standard product (ASSP) solutions.
Altera’s Cyclone V SoC FPGAs combine programmable logic with dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 processors that allow ADAS platform designers to customize the hardware and software running in their products. This combination provides powerful building blocks to accelerate algorithms commonly used in ADAS designs. Audi’s zFAS control unit is the industry’s first fully centralized ADAS module that processes all self-driving functions in a single unit, unlike other architectures which have multiple modules distributed throughout the vehicle. In zFAS, Altera’s FPGAs deliver performance-critical functions of sensor fusion, combining data from multiple sensors in the vehicle for highly reliable object detection and Deterministic Ethernet communications used to transport high bandwidth data within the vehicle.
Deterministic Ethernet IP for Next-Generation ADAS
TTTech’s industry-leading Deterministic Ethernet IP solutions address the increased bandwidth and software integration requirements found in next-generation ADAS applications. The developed safety platform for semi-autonomous operations combines high-performance computing with functional safety and accelerated software integration. TTTech´s TTEthernet® IP, software integration and safety platform integrated within Altera’s FPGAs deliver a highly efficient, scalable and high-performance solution for next generation ADAS systems.
“Altera is one of the key parts of zFAS, our highly advanced high-performance central driver assistance control unit that enables a car to sense and react to changing situations on the road,” said Ricky Hudi, executive vice president, Electronics, AUDI AG. “With TTTech, Altera, NVIDIA and our other partners, we are delivering piloted driving that allows our customers to experience a new level of performance and safety in fully featured vehicles from Audi.”
“Altera’s SoC FPGAs integrate a flexible fabric and CPU that enable us to deliver leading-edge communication safety and a vastly accelerated, yet very robust software integration process to Audi on their way towards the vision of piloted driving,” states Dr. Stefan Poledna, TTTech’s co-founder and executive board member. “FPGAs are well-suited to manage this type of complex computing and networking. They still remain an affordable and low-power solution.”
“Audi is a pioneer in realizing fully centralized ADAS architectures,” said Jeff Waters, senior vice president and general manager of the Altera Business Units. “Altera is pleased to be an enabling technology behind Audi’s leading-edge ‘piloted driving’ vision that couples innovative approaches to safety with a great driving experience.”
Altera FPGA Solutions for Automotive
Learn more about Altera’s complete portfolio of electronic design solutions for the automotive industry design, including ADAS, infotainment, electric vehicle and functional safety solutions at http://www.altera/automotive.
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