Marelli has launched a new AI-based ECU for engine and vehicle control in motorsport applications. Dubbed the VEC_480, it is designed for all types of vehicle propulsion, from traditional to electric.
The new unit ensures 100% compatibility with the rising trend of AI computation on board. It was presented at Professional Motorsport World Expo in Cologne, Germany, this week, where it also impressed the judges and won two awards.
According to Marelli, this technology redefines the traditional VCU for motorsport, offering performance, efficiency, reliability, computational capabilities and advanced connectivity to meet growing demands. Compared with previous VCUs, the VEC_480 offers better 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 also improved, enabling greater reliability in reiterating crucial vehicle operations.
The VEC_480 is engineered to manage the increasing complexity of neural-based algorithms in real time (milliseconds). This is achieved using an advanced AI accelerator (NPU), available with a high computing capacity up to 26 TOPS (tera operations per second). This 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 for 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 is also compatible with AI frameworks such as TensorFlow, TensorFlow Lite, Keras, PyTorch and ONNX.
