Written by Max A. Cherny
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – German industrial giant Bosch will team up with U.S. chip startup Tenstorrent to develop a platform for unifying key elements of automotive chips, Tenstorrent executives said.
Plans include developing a standardized way to use a building block of modern chips, called microchips, to create systems that can power vehicles with vastly different needs, David Bennett, chief customer officer at Tenstorrent, said in an interview.
By combining different amounts and types of chips to form complete processors, the two companies aim to reduce costs and increase the speed of bringing new silicon products to the automotive industry.
“(Bosch) is partnering with us to redefine how automakers look at silicon — buying silicon and building silicon,” Bennett said.
With the advent of electric cars, cars are increasingly becoming products that resemble large computer systems powered by a battery on four wheels.
The technical complexity of introducing electric and automated driving systems has prompted automakers to pursue new ways of building or purchasing the necessary chips.
Chip giants like Nvidia (NASDAQ:), Qualcomm (NASDAQ:) and Intel-owned Mobileye produce a range of driver assistance chips and associated software.
The idea behind the collaboration with Bosch is that standardizing technical requirements around microchip building blocks could bring down prices, Bennett said.
Producing a large quantity of a standard microchip that can be added or removed as needed for each application would save money. Automakers will also be given more customization options for each design, versus buying off-the-shelf parts, said Thaddeus Fortenberry, vice president of automotive company Tenstorrent.
The collaboration does not yet include any specific products or sales to the automakers.
Tenstorrent is led by Jim Keller, who headed Tesla’s (NASDAQ:) effort to design a self-driving chip. Keller has designed chips for AMD (NASDAQ:) and Apple (NASDAQ:), among other companies.
(Max A. Cherny in San Francisco; Editing by Varun Hong Kong)