The results of the third round of "Hubei Premium Products" were announced recently, and the Huashan A1000 automotive-grade chip developed by Black Sesame Technologies made the list. The domestically designed autonomous-driving chip, developed in Hubei, was already the first in China to meet both the ISO 26262 ASIL-B functional safety standard and the AEC-Q100 Grade 2 reliability standard. According to the company, its next-generation Huashan A2000 family, aimed at physical AI, has now fully entered mass production.

Where the Bar Sits for Automotive-Grade Chips

A chip the size of a fingernail serves as the brain of a smart vehicle. The market for high-end autonomous-driving chips has until now been dominated by overseas players.

Automotive-grade chips are held to standards very different from consumer chips. They must deliver the computing power autonomous driving requires while keeping power draw low and stability high, withstanding extreme conditions including high temperatures, vibration and complex electromagnetic environments, and they must clear the world's most demanding automotive functional safety and reliability certifications. Development cycles are long, the engineering is hard and the spending is heavy; ecosystem barriers and strict certification have long slowed the iteration and deployment of domestic autonomous-driving chips.

The Huashan A1000 by the Numbers

According to the announcement, Black Sesame Technologies' engineering team made sustained advances in chip architecture, image processing and safety mechanisms, culminating in the Huashan A1000:

  • Functional safety and reliability: the first autonomous-driving chip in China to meet both the ISO 26262 ASIL-B functional safety standard and the AEC-Q100 Grade 2 reliability standard. ISO 26262 is the international standard for automotive functional safety; AEC-Q100 is the reliability certification for automotive-grade chips.
  • Core IP: a single chip integrating the company's in-house Jiushao neural network accelerator and Xingmou image processing core.
  • Power and performance: 58 TOPS of computing power at a typical power draw of 18W (TOPS means trillions of operations per second), an attempt to solve the industry's long-standing tradeoff between high performance and low power consumption.

Next-Generation A2000: Built for Physical AI

As the Huashan A1000 enters mass production in vehicles, Black Sesame Technologies has already iterated to its next-generation high-performance chip platform built specifically for physical AI: the Huashan A2000 family. The platform fully supports deployment of VLA (vision-language-action) models and world models, and can underpin highway and urban NOA (navigation on autopilot) as well as coordinated passenger and commercial vehicle applications. The company says the Huashan A2000 family has now fully entered mass production.

Vehicles and Use Cases in the Field

The Huashan A1000 has moved out of the lab and into commercial scale, covering both passenger and commercial vehicles with steady supply to several mainstream automakers. Disclosed design wins include production models from Geely's Lynk & Co, Geely Galaxy and Dongfeng eπ, as well as a parking controller for FAW's Hongqi and a domain controller for Shaanxi Automobile's light trucks.

Beyond a Single Chip: The Wider "Hubei Premium" Lineup

The chip is not an isolated case. Other products recognized as "Hubei Premium" include Hubei-made power batteries that have won acceptance in the European market, new energy vehicles that have gone global on the strength of their safety record, and in-house developed digital twin systems, among others. Moving from individual technical breakthroughs toward industrial clusters, Hubei is pushing research results out of the lab and onto production lines and into global markets.