Ouster launches car-grade, fully customized digital lidar receiver chip

     High-resolution digital lidar supplier Ouster has released the latest Chronos chip, a vehicle-grade, fully customized digital lidar receiver chip that will be mounted on its DF series solid-state lidar. The Chronos chip is the foundation of the entire DF architecture, ensuring that Ouster can provide higher-performance, more efficient and more compact digital lidars for L2 to L5 automation in production vehicles.

     The Chronos chip combines Ouster's unique digital lidar architecture with the latest semiconductor technology, allowing the Ouster DF series lidar to directly benefit from the significant performance improvements brought about by advances in semiconductor technology, ultimately similar to digital cameras, enabling industry-leading performance improvements. widely used. With superior logic and performance, Chronos chips offer better memory, dynamic range and probing accuracy. The Chronos chip will be the most powerful lidar SPAD chip on the market to date, once again demonstrating Ouster's leadership in digital lidar semiconductors and systems.

     As the backbone of the DF series of automotive-grade solid-state lidars, Chronos chips are designed to meet ASIL-B automotive functional safety requirements under ISO 26262 and AEC-Q100. Ouster plans to complete the tape-out of the Chronos chip by the end of 2022 and integrate the chip into the first samples in 2023, with the final DF series targeted for production vehicles in 2025.

     "Unlike lidar technology, which requires complex combinations of numerous off-the-shelf components, our unique, leading-edge digital lidar technology enables simple, yet powerful lidars to be mass-produced, helping automotive OEMs achieve higher levels of safety and automation." Ouster Iain Levy, Vice President of the Automotive Business Unit, said, "Chronos chips represent the leading SPAD technology, enabling our solid-state digital lidars to be high-performance, reliable, efficient, compact and easy to mass-produce."

     "Since Ouster's inception, we have known that digital VCSEL/SPAD technology will be the future of lidar, leading four vertical industries into the era of automation. After each tape-out, the performance of the OS series will be greatly improved, and we plan to use the same The path to achieve the continuous improvement of the DF series." Ouster CTO Mark Frichtl said, "We believe that the DF series solid-state LiDAR equipped with the latest Chronos chip will become an important boost for our future growth and win more mass production vehicle projects for us. "