Intel buys MobilEye

Chip-maker Intel is in the process of snapping up the Israeli company widely considered to be at the focal point of the car industry’s move to autonomous driving.

MobilEye, the undisputed industry leader in the image processing systems vital to semi-autonomous and autonomous driving, are negotiating a $US15.3 billion deal offered by the chip-maker this week.

The move should give Intel the charge it needs to finally become more than just a PC chip strongman, while it rewards MobilEye for growing from nothing in 1999 to one of the most critical pieces in the march to autonomy.

MobilEye’s chips and algorithms process information from every single frame from the on-board cameras and use that information to help run everything from lane-departure warning systems to active cruise control and from pedestrian and animal recognition systems to traffic-jam assistance.

MobilEye provides the thinking muscle that is used by most of the world’s car-makers except, pointedly, Tesla, which it dumped last year after becoming uncomfortable with the scope of the claims the Californian BEV maker for its Autopilot system.

Predictions by Navigant Research indicate that by 2025 more than 4.5 million cars a year will be sold with Level 4 Autonomy (self driving, but with possible driver intervention) and more than 70 million with Level 2 autonomy (with two automated systems, like lane-keeping and active cruise control).

The brainpower to run those systems and to combine sensors like cameras, LiDars, radar and ultrasound, as well as older-school technologies like accelerometers and wheel-speed sensors, looks most likely to come from MobilEye. While the MobilEye systems pool these disparate data collection and gives the car a coherent picture so the Intel chip-powered parts can take care of steering, braking and accelerating.

While Intel has dominated the trade in non-specialist microprocessors since the 1970s, the societal move away from desktops and even laptops has seen it starting to lose out to ARM Holdings, which has a greater share of the market for hand-held devices.

A modern premium-segment car or SUV can run up to 100 ECUs and Intel has been working to adapt its high-end server space chips to automotive-grade durability to try to shrink that spiraling figure, while closing the networks’ hacking vulnerabilities.

It’s not Intel’s first dabble in the automotive field. In November last year it partnered with MobilEye and Delphi to develop and supply chips and software, based around MobilEye’s EyeQ4 and EyeQ5 chips.

The biggest rival for all of this is chip-maker Nvidia, which has partnerships with both ZF and Bosch, and its Drive PX2 architecture for machine learning.