based Electronic Control Unit for Motorsports
Marelli, which has its North American headquarters in Southfield, has launched its new AI-based Electronic Control Unit for engine and vehicle control in motorsport applications, which is designed for all types of vehicle propulsion, from traditional to electric.
Marelli is a leading mobility technology supplier to the automotive sector. The parent company, Marelli Holdings, is based in Japan.
The solution, called VEC_480, ensures 100 percent compatibility with the rising trend of real-time AI computation onboard, and was presented last week at the Professional MotorSport World Expo held in Cologne, Germany.
The breakthrough technology redefines the standard of traditional Vehicle Control Units (VCU) for motorsport, offering improved performance, efficiency, reliability, computational capabilities, and advanced connectivity to meet the sectorâ€TMs growing demands.
Compared to previous VCUs, the new solution offers added performance in computational power. Real-time computing performance is 2.5 times higher; the inter-processor bandwidth is increased by 10 times and RAM memory bandwidth is improved, enabling greater reliability in reiterating crucial vehicle operations.
VCUs are high-performance control units that integrate different functions into a single device: engine and chassis control and actuation, data logging and gateway to telemetry and cloud, and in-car networking.
Based on Marelli Motorsportâ€TMs experience in vehicle control solutions, the VEC_480 is engineered to manage the increasing complexity of neural based algorithms in real time (milliseconds).
The results are achieved through the adoption of an advanced AI Accelerator (NPU), available with a high computing capacity up to 26 TOPS (Tera Operations per Second). The technology provides greater potential for internal vehicle networking and engine or vehicle management.
The powerful AI accelerator embedded in the device supports real-time AI inference with low latency and high efficiency, paving the way to neural virtual sensors, data inference with AI, real-time video processing (track detection, object detection, and more), localization and positioning, performance analysis, predictive analysis, and voice recognition.
The technology also is compatible and supports the top AI frameworks, such as TensorFlow, TensorFlow Lite, Keras, PyTorch, and ONNX.
Acting as an accelerator for technology development, Marelli Motorsport develops innovations and cutting-edge solutions for racing vehicles, enabling the flow down to the passenger car business by leveraging an agile, fast, and optimized design.
Marelli Holdings has around 50,000 employees worldwide. The Marelli footprint includes 170 facilities and R&D centers across Asia, the Americas, Europe, and Africa.
