Snapdragon Cockpit and Ride Elite Platforms Announced For Cars

Qualcomm held its annual Snapdragon Summit in Hawaii, where it announced its upcoming flagship chipsets. While it introduced the Snapdragon 8 Elite, what truly caught our attention were the Snapdragon Cockpit Elite and Ride Elite. These automotive chips are set to power the infotainment systems in future cars. For those surprised, vehicles like the Mahindra Thar ROXX and TATA Curvv are already using Qualcomm Snapdragon-powered chipsets in their digital chassis.

We had the chance to learn more about these innovations during the Indian Edition of the Snapdragon Summit 2024. We also asked Qualcomm about a possible timeline for when we can expect cars powered by these chips to arrive in India, which we’ll discuss later in this article.

Everything About Snapdragon Cockpit Elite, Ride Elite

The Snapdragon Ride and Cockpit Elite platforms will be part of the digital chassis of cars, and will be powered by Oryon CPU. Here are the new features they will offer:

• Accelerated AI performance: Equipped with a dedicated Neural Processing Unit (NPU) designed for multimodal AI, the new platforms offer a 12x performance boost compared to previous cockpit systems. This enhances real-time data processing for both external environments and in-cabin conditions, ensuring personalised, adaptive responses and decisions.

• Flexible, centralised processing: With software virtualisation and multi-OS support, the platform can run multiple applications concurrently without performance degradation. This allows automakers to create configurable software-defined vehicles (SDVs), ensuring flexibility and scalability across various vehicle tiers.

• Power efficiency: The platform combines intelligent power management hardware and software to minimise energy consumption while delivering top-tier performance. It enhances vehicle longevity and optimises energy usage.

• Intuitive driver and passenger experiences: The platforms support context-aware applications, offering hands-free automated driving, real-time driver monitoring, and advanced object detection. With a significant boost in GPU performance (3x), they also enhance multimedia and gaming experiences within the vehicle.

• Safety-Focused Design: This feature is limited to the Snapdragon Ride Elite chip and is engineered to meet ASIL-D automotive safety standards. The platforms feature a dedicated safety island controller, ensuring the isolation of specific ADAS functions to guarantee reliable and interference-free operation.

• Software-defined and upgradeable: Qualcomm confirmed it will provide regular updates to these chips, enabling new features to be added in real time.

• Advanced camera subsystem: These platforms feature an advanced camera system capable of supporting over 40 multimodal sensors, including up to 20 high-resolution cameras. This ensures enhanced safety and comfort by providing 360-degree coverage and in-cabin monitoring, even in extreme driving conditions.

When are India's First Snapdragon Cockpit and Ride Elite Cars Launching?

The Snapdragon Cockpit Elite and Snapdragon Ride Elite platforms will be available for sampling in 2025. Qualcomm has already entered into collaborations with top automakers such as Li Auto and Mercedes-Benz AG, who plan to integrate these powerful platforms into their future vehicles.

During the press conference, we asked Qualcomm executives when we could expect the first cars using these chipsets. They replied that while there isn’t a fixed timeline, they expect the vehicles to arrive sometime between 2026 and 2027.