Intel (INTC) is stepping on the gas pedal on AI-enabled autonomous driving systems in an effort to penetrate the US auto market.
Intel Automotive Vice President and GM Jack Weast sits down with Yahoo Finance's Akiko Fujita at CES 2024 (Consumer Electronics Show) to discuss Intel's AI chip integration to vehicle systems to create more unique and enhanced user experiences.
"This new lineup of products brings the best of the AI PC and all the reliability of the data center into the vehicle so automakers can evolve their architecture away from fixed-function to software-defined and dynamic architectures going forward," Weast says.
Click here to view more of Yahoo Finance's coverage of CES 2024 this week, or you can watch this full episode of Yahoo Finance Live here.
Editor's note: This article was written by Luke Carberry Mogan.
Video Transcript
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- Yahoo Finance's out in Las Vegas for CES 2024 catching up with some of the biggest names in tech and talking what's next for AI. Akiko Fujita spoke with Jack Weast, Intel Auto VP and GM about the company's automotive chip efforts and the future of AI PCs in the car. Take a listen.
JACK WEAST: This new lineup of products brings the best of the AI PC and all the reliability of the data center into the vehicle so automakers can evolve their architecture away from fixed function to software-defined and dynamic architectures going forward.
AKIKO FUJITA: So how does what Intel is announcing change the way these EVs are structured?
JACK WEAST: So what it means for an automaker is before you kind of design a car around an engine, now you can start with a battery and a computer and build the rest from there. And so it really frees up their opportunity to do some really unique things.
So one of the other things that we announced this week is that we're also going to be the first supplier to deliver a chiplet-based product for the automotive industry and allow our customers to integrate their own custom chiplet inside of our products.
AKIKO FUJITA: What does that mean?
JACK WEAST: So what that means to an automaker is if you've got some special, let's say, AI algorithms inside your company or you really wanna to do something truly custom and differentiating what only that automaker's brand will have, in the past, you'd have to build a fully custom chip, which is incredibly expensive.
With a chiplet-based approach, the automaker can develop just a small chiplet. And we will integrate that our product and then deliver it back to them. So it's kind of a hybrid custom approach where they get the benefits of a fully custom differentiated piece of silicon but at a fraction of the cost.
AKIKO FUJITA: Fraction of a cost. What are we talking about in terms of where it is right now versus where the cost can be?
JACK WEAST: About 1/10 as expensive as building a fully custom.
AKIKO FUJITA: 1/10?
JACK WEAST: 1/10.
AKIKO FUJITA: What about from a user perspective? How does the experience change for the driver?
JACK WEAST: So what it means for consumers is they're gonna be able to enjoy a bunch of new kinds of experiences in the vehicle that they've not enjoyed before. So we announced this week with Zeekr, a leading Chinese electric vehicle maker, their new living room experience powered by Intel's new software-defined vehicle products.
And so what that brings is AI capabilities. So you can have a conversation with a generative AI voice assistant. It means you can play high-end PC games, productivity applications, video conferencing. You know, it's really a mobile living room or workspace on wheels.
AKIKO FUJITA: We have been seeing this transition in cars from just sports cars as we see it to machines on wheels, right? What does that ultimately mean for Intel, the opportunity you see given just how electrified and digital more and more of the car experience is?
JACK WEAST: Yeah, I think you said it. With every thing becoming more digital, the opportunity for companies like us who provide products that process all those digits becomes even bigger. We estimate that currently silicon as a percentage of a vehicle's bill of materials is only about 4% of the total cost. By the end of the decade, that will be 20% of the vehicle's bill of materials will be spent on silicon.