Editor’s note: Nvidia’s latest car computer has a processing speed of 2,000 trillion operations per second. The previous version of this story used an incorrect number for that speed.
AI technology company Nvidia has introduced a high-performance automotive computer designed for advanced processing of in-vehicle entertainment and autonomous driving functions.
The technology was announced on Tuesday at the company’s virtual GTC event. Analysts say the computer is designed to help Nvidia get ahead of rival Intel and its automotive chip company Mobileye.
Nvidia’s latest technology, called Drive Thor, can control autonomous driving, driver assistance systems, infotainment, digital instrument cluster, passenger monitoring and more from a single computer. This allows many vehicle functions on a system on a chip instead of spreading them across several electronic control units, reducing costs and streamlining development.
Drive Thor follows Nvidia’s other technological advancements released this year, including a graphics processing unit called Hopper and a central processing unit called Grace.
“What they’ve done with Thor is take Grace and Hopper and put them in a single SOC along with next-generation technology that they haven’t detailed yet,” said Sam Abuelsamid, an analyst at Guidehouse Insights.
Drive Thor has a processing speed of 2,000 trillion operations per second, compared with 176 for Mobileye’s most recent IQ Ultra car computer, Abuelsamid said. Qualcomm has yet to announce the processing speed of its latest Snapdragon Digital Chassis.
“I hope Qualcomm will announce something soon and Snapdragon Digital Chassis will get the first production application this year,” Abuelsamid said.
