During the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2025, where we've already seen what the future of BMW X3 (and other models) interiors will look like, Toyota unveiled plans to integrate Nvidia's cutting-edge technology into its next-generation vehicles, elevating automated driving capabilities to new heights. At the heart of this collaboration lies Nvidia's Drive AGX Orin supercomputer, supported by Nvidia's DriveOS operating system. Essentially, the AGX Orin supercomputer is Nvidia's next-generation insanely powerful small-form-factor computer that's built for generative AI, computer vision, and advanced robotics applications. It's all very geeky, but there's a lot of exciting stuff that could come to life as a result.

Drive AGX Orin Can Process Unfathomable Amounts Of Data

Drive AGX Orin is designed specifically for vehicles and is capable of 275 tera operations per second (TOPS). To put that in perspective, that means the AGX Orin can perform 275 trillion computing operations per second. Tesla's latest Hardware 4 systems are capable of 50 TOPS on each of its three neural networks (150 TOPS total). Elon Musk says that a fifth-generation system will arrive in 2026, but, in reality, Tesla's current Full Self-Driving Mode (FSD) can't do what Elon Musk promised right now, and still hasn't reached the limits of its less powerful Hardware 3 system.

Meanwhile, Toyota is getting ready to launch an EV called the Bozhi 3X (also known as Toyota bZ3X) SUV with an advanced self-driving system, along the same lines as Tesla's claims for FSD, in China this year, aiming to ensure its leadership in autonomous driving technology. Using Nvidia Drive AGX Orin X system-on-a-chip with 254 TOPS and a blend of sensors, including 11 high-definition cameras, 12 ultrasonic radars, three millimeter-wave radars, and lidar, Toyota could well catch up with Tesla and its strange insistence on using only cameras for sensors by the end of this year. Following that, Toyota will have the Drive AGX in-vehicle supercomputer to work with.

Nvidia Is At The Forefront Of Automotive Technology Across Several Brands

Toyota isn't the only automaker planning to use Nvidia for its self-driving needs. Nvidia also announced its NVIDIA DRIVE AGX Hyperion - an end-to-end autonomous vehicle platform that incorporates the Drive AGX system chip. Mercedes-Benz, JLR, and Volvo Cars are adopting the modular and scalable platform. "The next wave of autonomous machines will rely on physical AI world foundation models to understand and interact with the real world, and Nvidia Drive is purpose-built for this new era, delivering unmatched functional safety and AI," said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of Nvidia.

It's been quite a rise for Nvidia, which was founded in 1993 to catch the wave of accelerated computing, specifically graphics-based processing, just as video games became a cultural phenomenon. It went from being a logo on stickers people peeled off of new computers to a name PC gamers sought out due to its ground-breaking Graphics Processing Units (GPU).

The concept of accelerated computing came back as machine learning, commonly called AI, broke new ground as GPUs could provide the computing power needed for complex models. Nvidia has capitalized on the rise of AI to the point where it overtook Apple for a period in June 2024 as the world's most valuable company. While Tesla no longer uses Nvidia chips in its cars, the back end of Tesla's self-driving tech is powered by a cluster of tens of thousands of Nvidia H100 AI chips costing around $30,000 each.

By Ian Wright

PUBLISHED JANUARY 8, 2025 on CARBUZZ

Comments (0)

There are currently no comments.