Following pursuit to its competitor MediaTek’s plans of building a fully integrated automotive solution, Intel is now also hungry for a piece (or a massive chunk) of the self-driving pie. Thus, the chipmaker has today announced the formation of a whole separate group dedicated to lead work on the development of innovative self-driving solutions.
Murthy Renduchintala, President, Client and Internet of Things business at Intel, in the official statement says,
We created a new organization called the Automated Driving Group (ADG), which will be solely dedicated to innovating the future of driving and designing the next generation of advanced driver assist systems and autonomous driving solutions.
This division is a spin-off from the Internet of Things (IoT) business, which the chipmaker is aggressively trying to push to the forefront. It has been dubbed as the Automated Driving Group (or ADG) and will be spearheaded by Doug Davis. He has been working with Intel for the past thirty years and has recently been leading the company’s IoT division.
But, Davis is now deferring his retirement plans to become the senior vice president and general manager of this new autonomous driving group within the company. He is more than willing to lead the chipmaker in the next phase of its growth and success in another upcoming technology, which might soon become ubiquitous. Kathy Winter, the former VP at Delphi, is also joining ADG to assist Doug and the team in the development of all-round technology solutions for third-party manufacturers. She will be joining as the VP and GM of the division.
The decision to form a dedicated organisation for the development of futuristic connected mobility solutions can prove to be a significant move for Intel in the long run. This separate vertical is also in accordance with recent announcements connected to the chipmaker’s plans for the future. This includes the $250 million self-driving fund set up by its investment arm and the use of its latest Core i7 processor chips in Delphi and Mobileye autonomous driving platform announced yesterday.
To further drive this division home, Intel had recently picked up a couple startups, namely Yogitech and Arynga. The semiconductor tech focused on safety functions from the former and over-the-air (OTA) update mechanism developed by the latter will enable the chipmaker to expedite its efforts on the self-driving front.
Intel is now determined to move beyond its comfort zone of the PC and add some dimension to its business with categories like autonomy, IoT, and wearables. The company has recently not only acquired multiple artificial intelligence and computer vision firms to strengthen its said division but also detailed a comprehensive plan for the usage and release of the same in coming months.
