The shift to a world that incorporates more autonomy into both our work and leisure life is slowly becoming realized. As a significant step towards this future Arm is introducing brand new technologies to the AE portfolio. This includes bringing the class leading Mali-C71 image signal processor into our AE range of IP, as well as Arm’s Cortex-A78AE CPU and new Mali-G78AE GPU. These new technologies with advanced safety features offer the crucial stepping stones to enhance Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) and In-Vehicle Infotainment (IVI) capabilities in vehicles and enable more intelligent, configurable production lines in factories as we move into this new era of autonomous decision making.
Mali-C71AE is Arm’s highest performance image signal processor (ISP) now with comprehensive safety capability. Mali-C71AE delivers the high performance expected from Arm products with the required level of functional safety for a wide range of Automotive ADAS and Industrial Robotics applications where machines and people are sharing the environment or working alongside each other.
Where the Mali-C71AE really stands out is its ability to utilize dedicated hardware safety mechanisms and diagnostic software to prevent or detect systematic and random faults and ensures every-pixel reliability for vision systems where functional safety is a key requirement.
Mali-C71AE is developed for the emerging smart automotive systems and industrial markets. Delivering key visual information to both computer vision (CV) systems and human display for clear and convenient viewing, Mali-C71AE is the first product in the Mali Camera series of ISPs with built-in features for functional safety applications.
Mali-C71AE supports up to 4 real-time camera inputs or 16 camera streams from memory. Supporting simultaneous inputs from a mix of sensor and CFA types operating in a variety of modes allows the system developer to select from a wide range of sensors from various suppliers. Support for multiple camera inputs managed through the hardware means that a single instance of Mali-C71AE removes the need for an ISP per sensor. Instead the single ISP can be used to manage different sensors and frame rates for different scenarios in the vehicle or robot usage cycle. The key benefit of this capability is camera inputs can be processed in a range of ways: in as-received order, in a programmed order, or in various other SW-defined patterns – so you can prioritize based on system needs, such as batch-processing 4 cameras for surround view, or in an ADAS application making sure the long-range forward-facing camera input is processed when received, to minimize latency.
Mali-C71AE contains advanced spatial (2D) noise reduction ("Sinter®"), per-exposure noise profiling and chromatic aberration correction, providing optimized image data for computer vision applications and the best-quality image to the vision system for display to the human operator.
Mali-C71AE provides real-time safety features for ADAS and human-machine interface (HMI) applications, enabling system-level functional safety compliance. With over 400 dedicated fault-detection circuits, built-in self-test (BIST), and CRC on critical data paths, every pixel is tagged for reliability.
With its 24 bit processing of ultra-wide dynamic range to capture every detail, from bright sunlight to deep shadows, Mali-C71AE features independent dynamic range management for optimum human vision (display) and for computer vision (CV) applications.
Mali-C71AE provides a wide range of data output formats, possible “suspect” pixels tagged by location, region-of-interest crops and planar histograms for further CV system analysis, making it ideal for advanced machine-vision use cases, including ADAS and industrial mobile robotics.
Mali-C71AE provides ultra-wide dynamic range and multi-camera support with built-in features for functional safety enablement. These advanced features, combined with high performance, are ideal for smart manufacturing and factory automation applications, including production line monitoring, quality control and mobile robotics. In addition, the Mali-C71AE image signal processor is intended for use in multi-camera automotive vision systems, either for computer vision as part of integrated ADAS functions or output to display for human vision features, or a combination of both. Applications include 360-degree surround view, object detection, lane positioning, road-sign recognition, mirror replacement, reversing camera, and occupant monitoring. Mali-C71AE supports the requirements of automotive vision systems needing to meet SIL 2 and ASIL B functional safety and has been developed with an ASIL D process for various ADAS applications.
Arm Mali-C71AE provides high performance with the required level of functional safety needed for a wide range of automotive ADAS and industrial robotics applications as we journey to a more autonomous future. Arm is excited and proud to be enabling and accelerating the development of autonomous systems. It brings the crucial technologies with key capabilities to enable safety critical applications in a wider range of markets including automotive and industrial.
Explore our product page to learn more about Mali-C71AE, Arm’s first ISP with built-in features for functional safety applications. Join our on-demand webinar for an in-depth discussion about the product’s enhanced capabilities.
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