NVIDIA releases its latest automotive chip, how powerful is it?

NVIDIA, a processor technology giant, recently announced its next-generation artificial intelligence (AI) processor for self-driving cars, NVIDIA DRIVE Atlan, at its GTC annual conference. This processor can provide more than 1,000 TOPS of computing power, targeting the models that major car manufacturers will launch in 2025. It combines AI and BlueField technology on a single chip. The new SoC will provide self-driving cars with more than 1,000 TOPS of computing power and data center-level security.

Processor technology giant NVIDIA recently announced its next-generation artificial intelligence (AI) processor NVIDIA DRIVE Atlan for self-driving cars at its annual GTC conference. This processor can provide more than 1,000 TOPS of computing power and is targeted at models that major automakers will launch in 2025.

NVIDIA pointed out that NVIDIA DRIVE Atlan on a single chip is the latest product in NVIDIA's centralized computing blueprint for self-driving cars, combining AI and software with the latest computing, networking, and security to achieve unprecedented performance and safety.

DRIVE Atlan will use NVIDIA's next-generation GPU architecture, new Arm CPU cores, and deep learning and computer vision accelerators. With data center-level performance, Atlan will provide automakers with sufficient computing power to build software-defined vehicles with rich programmable capabilities and the ability to be permanently upgraded through secure over-the-air (OTA) updates.

NVIDIA DRIVE Orin is the world’s highest-performance, most advanced processor for autonomous vehicles and robotics, delivering up to 254 TOPS of computing power.

“The transportation industry needs a reliable computing platform that can last for decades. Software investments are too large to be repeated for every vehicle,” said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA. “NVIDIA DRIVE is the most advanced AI and self-driving computing platform with a rich global software and developer ecosystem and architectural compatibility from generation to generation. Today we’re announcing a new addition to our product roadmap. The new DRIVE Atlan is truly a technological marvel that brings together NVIDIA’s strengths in AI, automotive, robotics, safety and the BlueField secure data center to enable our customers to build a safe fleet of self-driving cars.”

DRIVE Atlan will integrate the NVIDIA BlueField data processing unit (DPU), which provides a wide range of advanced networking, storage and security services to support complex computing and AI workloads in self-driving cars. BlueField provides single-chip programmability of a complete data center infrastructure, and also adds a secure isolation zone to prevent data leakage and cyberattacks. NVIDIA designed the DRIVE Atlan chip from scratch to handle the large number of AI applications running simultaneously in self-driving cars in a safe and reliable way.

NVIDIA said that the NVIDIA DRIVE Xavier (30 TOPS) processor previously used for self-driving cars is now used in mass-produced cars and trucks, and major automakers have already chosen to use NVIDIA DRIVE Orin (254 TOPS) in their production lines starting in 2022. NVIDIA DRIVE Atlan targets cars produced in 2025 and later, and will expand the leadership of the NVIDIA DRIVE system-on-chip product line.

Since the advent of NVIDIA DRIVE Atlan, Orin and Xavier have been programmable through open source CUDA and TensorRT APIs and libraries, allowing developers to leverage their investment across multiple generations as they build the roadmap for future production self-driving cars.