BAIDU LAUNCHES GLOBAL FIRST MASS-PRODUCED AUTONOMOUS DRIVING COMPUTING PLATFORM
BEIJING — Baidu announced that its first global mass-produced autonomous driving computing platform—Apollo Computing Unit (ACU)— rolled off the production line during a ceremony at Baidu’s partner Flex’s Suzhou plant. The ACU will be first applied in Apollo Valet Parking product jointly developed by Baidu and Shanghai-based WM Motor. It will also make WM Motor the first carmaker with the mass production of AVP solution.
“The launch of the ACU indicates that Baidu made a significant improvement in automotive-grade safety, the commercialization of autonomous driving, and the software and hardware supply chain management,” said Wang Yunpeng, general manager of Baidu’s Autonomous Driving Department, adding that “Baidu and Flex will form an effective technology alliance and bring each one’s advantages and strength in resources and technologies.”
The Chinese search giant inked a strategic partnership agreement with Flex in June 2018 to jointly develop solutions for comprehensive, systematic and reliable solutions for autonomous driving, intelligent connectivity and intelligent traffic. Flex leveraged its R&C experience in L4 Robotaxi project and professional knowledge and offered Baidu specific solutions of hardware, diagnostic software development, and industrial design, thermal management structure design, testing and verification, integration and optimization of supply chain, production line design, and the scale manufacturing based on Bai Apollo experts’ suggestions and architecture demands.
The R&D and design of ACU comes from XILINX’s core processing chips, semiconductor company Infineon’s automotive safety control processor, AUTOSAE system provider Vector's underlying software operating system, Real-Time Innovations (RTI)’s end-of-car systems and communication services among different modules, and Swiss Re's insurance services.
XILINX POWERS BAIDU'S PRODUCTION-READY ACU-ADVANCED PLATFORM FOR AUTOMATED VALET PARKING
CHANGSHA, China - Xilinx, Inc., the leader in adaptive and intelligent computing, today announced that the Xilinx® Automotive (XA) Zynq® UltraScale+™ MPSoC (XAZU5EV) is powering Baidu's production-ready Apollo Computing Unit (ACU)-Advanced platform for Automated Valet Parking (AVP), the industry's first dedicated computing solution for AVP. The ACU is Baidu's advanced in-vehicle computing platform for autonomous driving. ACU-Advanced is the first production-ready AVP controller enabled by an XA Zynq UltraScale+ MPSoC.
Designed for the specific scenarios and functions of valet parking, which require sophisticated and powerful deep learning inference to handle the complex driving environment, the production-ready ACU-Advanced for AVP features the XA Zynq UltraScale+ MPSoC for sensor fusion and AI processing, replacing the GPU used in proof-of-concept. In addition, the platform is fully compatible with the Baidu PaddlePaddle framework, and includes five cameras, 12 ultrasonic radars and a -40 ~ 85℃ working temperature range, which meets vehicle–level production requirements.
"Through our close collaboration with Xilinx, we are providing automotive OEMs and Tier 1 suppliers with an adaptable computing platform," said Wang Yunpeng, senior director of Baidu's Automatic Driving Technology Department. "The Xilinx technology is at the heart of our ACU- Advanced platform for AVP as no other solution could provide us with the performance required for mass production."
Xilinx is a leading automotive solution provider with over 13 years of auto industry experience. The company's automotive solutions offer the ultimate in hardware and software partitioning flexibility combined with a variety of networking connectivity options, unique functional safety architecture configurations and security features for current and future autonomous drive modules. Cumulatively, Xilinx has shipped more than 170 million devices globally for automotive use, with 70 million used for production ADAS systems. The company works with over 200 automotive companies, comprised of major Tier 1s, OEMs, and startups globally.
"Baidu is increasingly a major player in automotive, and Xilinx is the ideal solution to solve the technical challenges associated with AVP and automated vehicle development," said Yousef Khalilollahi, vice president, core vertical markets, Xilinx. "By providing an adaptable hardware platform, Baidu can design flexible and scalable systems that seamlessly incorporate AI compute acceleration and functional safety through diversity in processing engines. We look forward to expanding our collaboration with Baidu to take automated driving to the next level."
