OmniVision OAX8000 - First Dedicated Driver Monitoring IC with NPU, ISP and DDR3 Memory

Its advantages include the lowest energy consumption in the industry.

OmniVision Technologies has unveiled an Application-Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) for automotive driver monitoring systems (DMS). According to the manufacturer, the OAX8000 is the first dedicated driver monitoring chip to feature a neural processing unit (NPU), a digital image signal processor (IPS), and 1GB of onboard DDR3 SDRAM. The high degree of integration, achieved, in particular, by the use of multilayer layout, allowed to obtain high processing speed - up to 1.1 trillion operations per second on eye-tracking algorithms - and the lowest power consumption among such solutions. When paired with an OAX8000 automotive image sensor, the new IC uses the only 1W in typical conditions. Other advantages include the small footprint on the board.

According to analysts Yole Développement, the DMS market will grow rapidly in the coming years - between 2020 and 2025 jb; lftncz a 56% CAGR. This is due to the requirement of the European Union that by 2022 all new cars sold in the region be equipped with DMS cameras.

The embedded OAX8000 NPU is supported by popular neural network tools including TensorFlow, Caffe, MXNet, and ONNX. In addition, the ASIC integrates four Arm Cortex-A5 processor cores with Neon technology to accelerate video encoding and decoding and video analytics tasks. HDR and IR support allows you to work with video captured in high-contrast lighting conditions, day and night. The integrated video encoder supports up to 5MP OmniVision automotive image sensors and outputs video up to 2K at 30fps. The OAX8000's load times are significantly faster than its closest competitor. This eliminates the delay between turning on the ignition and activating the DMS camera. Besides the processor, it supports secure boot functions to ensure cybersecurity.

OAX8000 samples in BGA196 packages are already available. The microcircuit is AEC-Q100 Grade 2 certified.