The car looks impressive, just as you would expect from a modern vehicle coming from a brand like Cadillac. Qualcomm execs also talked that the future of automotive, pointing out that Qualcomm also invests research and development for the self-driving car market. Nakul Duggal, vice president of product management for Qualcomm Technologies, helped us understand some of the company's aspirations when it comes to the future of automotive products.
Cameras, phones, navigation and more
The prototype car has showcased a camera integrated into the dashboard, two phones that can interconnect with the Qualcomm powered Infotainment, and 3D navigation, something that might come to production vehicles next year.
It goes without saying that Qualcomm wants to take some of the automotive business away from Nvidia, who seems to be doing fine in automotive. Qualcomm wants to do more than modems, and it wants to become a dominant player in the automotive SoC market.
The company is also working on its own self-driving system, but we could not get more details about any design wins or time to market.
No word on design wins yet
We did learn that we should hear more about Qualcomm infotainment in 2016 and that designs are well underway. It usually takes a few years to develop a car infotainment system or cabin design, but some car manufacturers are committed to using Adreno as the GPU of choice to run the infotainment and many other displays inside upcoming cars.
The demo looks impressive and there will be many designs coming in 2016, but Qualcomm could not announce anything for its partners. It remains to be seen how many design wins Qualcomm managed to get in this high-margin niche.
