As PC sales slump and AMD looks to strip share in the PC gaming market, Intel has moved get a seat in the driverless car market with the US$15.3bn acquisition of Mobileye an Israeli company, which develops “autonomous driving” systems.Mobileye and Intel are currently working together, along with German carmaker BMW and 27 other automotive brands, to put 40 test vehicles on the road in the second half of this year.
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The business currently controls two thirds of the market for software that runs automatic emergency braking and semi-autonomous cruise control systems already fitted to cars and trucks.
Announcing the deal, Intel said that as cars “progress from assisted driving to fully autonomous, they are increasingly becoming data centres on wheels”.
The chipmaker reckons that by 2020 driverless cars will generate 4,000 GB, or 4 terabytes, of data a day that can be mined for information.
Betsy Van Hees, analyst at Loop Capital Markets told the BBC, that Intel had very little presence in the automotive market, “so this is a tremendous opportunity for them to get into a market that has significant growth opportunities”.
