LeapFive Technology was invited to participate in the

“12th Songshan Lake China IC Innovation Summit Forum”

On August 5, 2022, the “12th Songshan Lake China IC Innovation Summit Forum” was held in Songshan Lake, Dongguan, focusing on the current market hotspot – “Smart Mobility.” This forum invited representative chip manufacturers to recommend their new domestic innovative IC products, aiming to promote the domestic chip industry to empower smart mobility.

The “Songshan Lake China IC Innovation Summit Forum” (hereinafter referred to as ‘Songshan Lake IC Forum’) is the IC forum, which is closest to the market. Over the past years, 91% of the new domestic products introduced by “Songshan Lake IC Forum” have achieved mass production. In the past eleven years, “Songshan Lake IC Forum” has recommended 63 companies. Since its debut at “Songshan Lake IC Forum,” 15 companies have been listed and 1 company has passed the conference.LeapFive Technology was invited to attend this forum and Li Tao, product director of LeapFive Technology, introduced NB2 at the forum.”Currently, NB2 is the first Full Mask RISC-V architecture high-end application processor, using an advanced 12nm process.”

According to Li Tao, product director of LeapFive Technology, NB2 is an application processor positioned on the edge side, which is not directly used in automobiles, but applied in the field of IIoT related to automobiles, such as smart transportation scenarios. Different from the traditional autonomous driving single-point detection of traffic detection solutions, smart transportation needs to focus on pedestrians, roads, vehicles, and other scenarios, and jointly create an IIoT with smart transportation as the core, including OBU used in vehicles and the roadside unit (RSU), which cooperates with the OBU to ensure the safety of real-time road conditions.NB2 adopts quad-core RISC-V architecture with a main frequency of 1.8GHz, external memory supports DDR4/LPDDR4(x), and the bandwidth can reach up to 4266MT/s, and built-in GPU, NPU, audio and video DSP and other hardware acceleration engines. It integrates various standard interfaces such as Ethernet and USB, and the chip complies with industrial-grade standards, and the typical power consumption is as low as 5W.In terms of application, Li Tao introduced the application of NB2 on the RSU side. In the application of RSU, it is generally connected to the TMS (Traffic Integrated Management System) through a switch or a network. Also, there will be different connections on the end side, including environment perception, MEC perception devices, and signal/traffic lights. Therefore, RSU needs industrial-grade processors with high computing power, multiple connections, low latency, and high reliability. NB2 has powerful services management and data processing capabilities. The high-speed communication interface can be perfectly connected to 5G communication, which is suitable for V2X scenario of RSU. As well as it can provide strong support for the implementation of RSU. Furthermore, different from the existing RSU solution, NB2 provides the possibility of expansion for the operation and maintenance of future strategies and algorithms.

In addition, according to Li Tao, NB2 has done a lot of work in enhancing security features, using the security unique ID chip as identification to enable the device to access the network safely, Secure channel transmission through data encryption, make firmware tamper-proof with secure boot, as well as, enhanced with PMP to ensure data confidentiality and integrity.Furthermore, Li Tao pointed out that except the previous mentioned features to enhance security, NB2 equipped with blockchain features, including blockchain basic features, blockchain clients, and blockchain light nodes, etc., to solve the problems of data authentication, traceability, and mutual trust in data with stakeholders.

The product positioning of LeapFive Technology is to solve the three major problems of security risks, functional homogeneity, and high cost in the IIoT. Li Tao believes that those problems can be solved through industrial-grade custom chip solutions with self-controllable architecture. LeapFive Technology hopes to solve common problems in the IIoT and empower industrial interconnection and edge intelligence through industrial-grade custom chips and the product technology system of “three horizontal, one vertical, and one platform” independently developed by LeapFive Technology.