I found two interesting automotive SoCs in the Linux 6.19 changelog: Renesas R-Car X5H 16-/32-core Cortex-A720AE SoC and Black Sesame Technologies’ “Wudang” C1200 8-/10-core Cortex-A78AE processor family. While announced in 2024, there’s still no product page for the Renesas chip. So today, I’ll focus on the Wudang C1200 family.
They are designed to be automotive-grade “cross-domain computing platforms” capable of handling multiple functions such as in-cabin sensing systems (e.g., driver attention monitoring), infotainment, auto-parking systems, safety information, autonomous driving, and more.
Wudang C1296 10-core SoC
Wudang C1296 specifications:
- CPU
- 10x Arm Cortex-A78AE automotive-grade cores
- Dual-Core Lockstep (DCLS) supported, ASIL-D compliance
- Up to 32K DMIPS (or 16K DMIPS in DCLS)
- GPU – Automotive-grade Arm Mali-G78AE GPU; DCLS supported, ASIL-D compliance
- NPU – DynamAl NN Engine
- Hybrid precision 4-bit/8-bit MAC array
- Overall 80% utilization of convolution layers MAC Array
- Sparse support for storage and acceleration
- INT8/INT16, FP16 GEMM and nonlinear functions acceleration
- Open-source DynamAl NN compiler tools
- Audio DSP – HiFi5 DSP with NNE to speed up sound processing algorithms
- Computer Vision Accelerator
- 4-core high-performance vision DSP
- CV Hardware acceleration
- H.264/H.265 video encoder and decoder for 4K video
- Cache/Memory
- 512KB L2 cache, 2MB L3 cache/cluster
- 12MB super large SRAM space
- Automotive grade 64-bit LPDDR5/LPDDR4X interface
- Storage – UFS 3.1
- Display Interfaces
- 2x MIPI DSI
- 2x LVDS
- 1x DP/eDP
- 4K standard and wide displays; multiple screen output supported
- Camera support
- 12-channel HD camera input
- 17MP+ camera input supported
- 3-exposure HDR, up to 140dB dynamic range
- Offline low-light denoising and LED flash suppression
- Support for RGB-IR sensor
- 2.4G pixels per second processing
- Networking
- 2x 10GbE + 2x 2.5GbE
- CAN-ETH high-speed switching capability
- USB – 2x USB 3.1 interfaces
- PCIe – PCIe 4.0 with support for 2×2-lane and 1×4-lane configurations
- Other peripheral interfaces
- Over 20x CAN-FD
- Over 6x LIN interfaces
- FlexRay interface
- UART, SPI, I2C, I3C, I2S, TDM, GPIO
- Package – FCBGA 31×31 mm, 0.8 mm pitch
- Manufacturing Process – 7nm automotive process
- Temperature Range – -40°C – 105°C
- Function Safety and Information Security
- lS026262 ASIL-B and AEC-Q100 Grade-2 standard
- Real-time security monitoring and inspection
- ECC, Parity
- EVITA-Full (international) and OSCCA (China)
- Secure boot
- OTP for private key storage and life-cycle management
- Hardware encryption and decryption engines, dedicated hardware acceleration engines for secure communication
Wudang C1236 8-core SoC
Wudang C1236 specifications:
- CPU
- 8x Arm Cortex-A78AE automotive-grade cores
- DCLS supported, ASIL-D compliance
- Up to 32K DMIPS (or 16K DMIPS in DCLS)
- GPU – Automotive-grade Arm Mali-G78AE GPU; DCLS supported, ASIL-D compliance
- NPU – DynamAl NN Engine
- Hybrid precision 4-bit/8-bit MAC array
- Overall 80% utilization of convolution layers MAC Array
- Sparse support for storage and acceleration
- INT8/INT16, FP16 GEMM and nonlinear functions acceleration
- Open-source DynamAl NN compiler tools
- Audio DSP – HiFi5 DSP with NNE to speed up sound processing algorithms
- Computer Vision Accelerator
- 5-core high-performance vision DSP
- CV Hardware acceleration
- H.264/H.265 video encoder and decoder for 4K video
- Cache/Memory
- 512KB L2 cache, 2MB L3 cache/cluster
- 12MB super large SRAM space
- Automotive grade 64-bit LPDDR5/LPDDR4X interface
- Storage – UFS 3.1
- Display Interfaces
- 2x MIPI DSI
- 4K standard and wide displays; dual screen output supported
- Camera support
- 12-channel HD camera input
- 17MP+ camera input supported
- 3-exposure HDR, up to 140dB dynamic range
- Offline low-light denoising and LED flash suppression
- Support for RGB-IR sensor
- 2.4G pixels per second processing
- Networking
- 2x 10GbE + 2x 2.5GbE
- CAN-ETH high-speed switching capability
- USB – 1x USB 3.1 interfaces
- PCIe – PCIe 4.0 with support for 2×2-lane and 1×4-lane configurations
- Other peripheral interfaces
- Over 20x CAN-FD
- Over 6x LIN interfaces
- FlexRay interface
- UART, SPI, I2C, I3C, I2S, TDM, GPIO
- Package – FCBGA 31×31 mm, 0.8 mm pitch
- Manufacturing Process – 7nm automotive process
- Temperature Range – -40°C – 105°C
- Function Safety and Information Security
- lS026262 ASIL-B and AEC-Q100 Grade-2 standard
- Real-time security monitoring and inspection
- ECC, Parity
- EVITA-Full (international) and OSCCA (China)
- Secure boot
- OTP for private key storage and life-cycle management
- Hardware encryption and decryption engines, dedicated hardware acceleration engines for secure communication
Besides the number of cores, the only differences I could find between the C1296 and C1236 are that the latter is designed for dual-display setups instead of multi-display configurations, features a 5-core Vision Accelerator (versus 4 cores for the C1296), and only has one USB 3.1 interface.
There’s no information about software support on the product page, but I suspect it should probably support Android for Infotainment, as well as Linux and RTOS for the dashboard and low-level functions. The commit message in the Linux kernel log implies that a quad-core model is also available:
arm64: dts: bst: add support for Black Sesame Technologies C1200 CDCU1.0 board
Add device tree support for the Black Sesame Technologies (BST) C1200 CDCU1.0 ADAS 4C2G platform. This platform is based on the BST C1200 SoC family.
The changes include:
– Adding a new BST device tree directory
– Adding Makefile entries to build the BST platform device trees
– Adding the device tree for the BST C1200 CDCU1.0 ADAS 4C2G board
This board features a quad-core Cortex-A78 CPU, and various peripherals including UART, and interrupt controller.
I had never heard about Black Sesame Technologies before, but the company was founded in 2016. Its history shows it formed a global partnership with Bosch in 2018, launched the Huashan A1000/A1000L processors in 2020, which are now found in various Geely and Dongfeng cars, as well as Baidu’s autonomous driving solution, and officially launched the C1200 family in April 2025. They have over 1000 employees in various cities in China, Hong Kong, Singapore, and the US.
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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