NVIDIA is working with two major partners to bring self-driving technology to cars and trucks
NVIDIA is working with two major partners to bring self-driving technology to cars and trucks
At Bosch Connected World last week, NVIDIA announced its partnership with two major partners to bring self-driving technology to cars and trucks. First off, NVIDIA and Bosch, which the world’s largest tier-1 automotive supplier, have announced Bosch AI car computer. The NVIDIA Xavier-based self-driving car system is touted as an “AI car computer” for the masses. The appeal of NVIDIA Xavier system on chip (SoC) is its ability to deliver up to “30 DL TOPS (Deep Learning Tera-Ops)” at a low TDP of 20W. Though NVIDIA Xavier’s compute prowess is able to deliver “Level 4 autonomy, where a car can drive on its own, without human intervention”, the Bosch AI car computer will be launched with Level 3 autonomy, where human intervention is required at certain situations.
Xavier’s CPU will comprise 8 NVIDIA custom ARM cores that may be derived from the Denver CPU cores that are powering the Parker SoC. As for Xavier’s GPU, it will feature the company’s next generation Volta architecture, and will house 512 CUDA cores. The entire chip will have 7 billion transistors, and the chip die will be manufactured by TSMC using its 16nm FinFET+ process.
Besides targeting motor cars for the masses, NVIDIA has its sights set on self-driving trucks as the company also made known its collaboration with truck manufacturer Paccar. According to Paccar CEO Ron Armstrong, his firm is interested in pursuing self-driving technology for its trucks by leveraging on NVIDIA’s open AI self-driving computing platform. The company has already developed a proof-of-concept self-driving truck with Level 4 autonomy, which is built on NVIDIA Drive PX2 platform. The market for self-driving trucks has great potential as there are “currently 300 million trucks worldwide, driving over 1.2 trillion miles (~2 trillion kilometers) annually.”