At CES in Las Vegas, Nevada, held Jan 6–9, Texas Instruments (TI) unveiled for the first time new automotive semiconductors and development resources aimed at enhancing safety and automated‑driving capabilities across vehicle segments.
Mark Ng, director in TI's Automotive Systems business, said: "The auto industry is moving toward a future where driving no longer requires human control. Semiconductors are the core that bring a safer, smarter, more automated experience to every car. From environmental sensing and vehicle‑to‑vehicle communications to decision execution, engineers can build on TI's end‑to‑end system solutions to chart the next frontier in automotive innovation."
To boost safety and automation in next‑generation cars, automakers are gradually adopting centralized compute systems that combine artificial intelligence with sensor fusion to enable real‑time intelligent decisions. TI, in turn, introduced a scalable TDA5 high‑performance compute system‑on‑chip (SoC) family, optimized for power and functional safety and equipped with edge AI — supporting up to SAE Level 3 automated driving.
Built for high‑performance compute, the TDA5 SoC family delivers 10 to 1,200 TOPS of edge AI compute, with energy efficiency exceeding 24 TOPS/W.
To simplify complex in‑vehicle software management, TI is partnering with Synopsys to launch a TDA5 SoC virtual development kit. Its digital‑twin capability can shorten software‑defined‑vehicle (SDV) development cycles by up to 12 months, helping products reach market faster.
The rapid rise of software‑defined vehicles (SDVs) and steadily higher automation levels are driving a fundamental shift in automotive subsystem architectures. Ethernet is a key enabler of this change, providing a simple, unified network that supports real‑time collection and transmission of more data across vehicle domains. TI's new DP83TD555J-Q1 10BASE-T1S Ethernet Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI) PHY integrates a media access controller and offers nanosecond‑level time synchronization, industry‑leading reliability and power over data lines. With these features, engineers can extend high‑performance Ethernet to automotive edge nodes while reducing cable complexity and cost.
Radar technology, which delivers stronger perception and reliability across weather conditions, is foundational to advanced ADAS and higher‑level automated driving. TI also introduced the AWR2188 single‑chip 8‑transmit/8‑receive 4D imaging radar transmitter, helping engineers simplify high‑resolution radar system design. Together with the DP83TD555J-Q1 10BASE-T1S Ethernet physical layer (PHY), the new device further broadens TI's automotive portfolio and enables development of next‑generation advanced driver‑assistance systems (ADAS) and software‑defined vehicles (SDVs).
