indie Semiconductor Introduces Class-leading Computer Vision Processor Family

Estimated reading time: 2 minutes

indie Semiconductor, Inc., an Autotech solutions innovator, announced the addition of a highly innovative iND880xx product line to its fast-growing vision processor portfolio, developed to address the demanding specifications of Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) and driver viewing use cases, such as Surround View systems and Electronic Mirrors. This latest family of processors further enhances indie’s comprehensive suite of sensing solutions for computer vision, LiDAR, radar, and ultrasound, and underpins indie’s leadership as the only automotive company to offer a dynamic portfolio spanning all edge-sensing modalities.

Vision-based sensing has rapidly become a critical sensor modality for ADAS, driven by government regulation, new car acceptance programs (NCAP), and improved consumer awareness of vehicle safety. Key safety applications enabled by vision sensing include automated emergency braking (AEB), lane keep assist (LKA), blind spot detection (BSD), driver and occupant monitoring (DMS/OMS), smart back-up, and vulnerable road user (VRU) protection. In fact, the need for improved VRU protection - which aims to safeguard pedestrians in particular - was recently bolstered by the U.S. Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) AEB regulation FMV127. This progressive regulation includes testing requirements for pedestrian AEB (PAEB), including low-light and nighttime testing, placing stringent requirements on vision processor performance.

The iND880xx video processor system-on-chip (SoC) family sets new benchmarks in image signal processing (ISP) performance and functionality for both viewing and sensing applications. Balancing the competing needs of low light sensor performance (luminance) and the ability to differentiate colors (chrominance) for high-performance perception (for example, to accurately differentiate red and amber traffic lights) has been an ongoing challenge for legacy vision processors. High latency initialization and pipeline processing has also limited legacy ADAS camera system real-time safety capabilities. The iND880xx family addresses these unique challenges through the product’s proprietary ISP pipeline ability to support concurrent, low-latency processing of four independent sensor inputs, delivering a combined maximum throughput of 1400 megapixels per second.

Additionally, proprietary ISP features include a 24-bit processing pipeline that enables high dynamic range (HDR) processing up to 144dB, with dedicated support for the broadest range of sensor color filter arrays (CFAs), including RGGB, RCCB, RYYCy, and RGB-IR, facilitating the highest performance environmental perception even in low light conditions. Further, the ISP supports eWarp®, indie’s proprietary high-performance geometric processing, to dewarp image distortion from a wide field of view lens. These class-leading ISP capabilities allow automakers the scalability to deploy multiple instances of the iND880xx into various high-performance viewing and ADAS sensing use cases across their entire vehicle portfolio.

“The iND880xx product family represents a revolutionary step in performance and integration for automotive vision processing,” said Abhay Rai, indie's chief product officer. “The imperatives for vision-based ADAS sensing applications are growing, while in parallel consumer expectations for camera-based innovation are accelerating. Automakers need to deploy multiple cameras to drive various applications in demanding environmental conditions, including low light, as exemplified by the recent NHTSA PAEB regulation. Our groundbreaking iND880xx processor family delivers on all these challenges.”

The iND880xx family is sampling with select lead customers and will be in serial production deployment in 2025.

The iND880xx solution will be showcased at the upcoming AutoSens Europe 2024 in Barcelona, Spain, October 8-10.