Advanced Computing in the Age of AI | Thursday, March 28, 2024

Autonomous Vehicles to Utilize NVIDIA’s Tegra K1 

At the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) taking place in Las Vegas, Nevada, NVIDIA announced that it’s Tegra K1 mobile processor will be used in autonomous cars of the future. Currently being utilized by the world’s top ten energy-efficient computers, the Tegra K1 has already gained attention in the HPC community.

At the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) taking place in Las Vegas, Nevada, NVIDIA announced that it’s Tegra K1 mobile processor will be used in autonomous cars of the future. Currently being utilized by the world’s top ten energy-efficient computers, the Tegra K1 has already gained attention in the HPC community. With NVIDIA processors powering over 4.5 million cars on the roads today, what will the Tegra K1 add to the chipmaker's automotive legacy?

The Tegra K1 contains a quad-core CPU along with a 192-core GPU using the NVIDIA Kepler architecture. It will be used to drive camera-based advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) that will help the driver in a variety of ways during his or her journey. These systems include pedestrian detection and lane-departure warnings, among others.

"To process the steady deluge of sensor and camera data required by a self-driving car, NVIDIA is bringing highly energy-efficient supercomputer technology inside the vehicle," said Taner Ozcelik, vice president and general manager of the automotive business at NVIDIA. "Tegra K1 solves this by providing 10 times the computing power of previous mobile processors without consuming additional energy."

The Tegra K1 will also allow for customizable digital dashboards. Using NVIDIA’s Material Definition Language and the processor’s ability to create 3D graphics, customizable infotainment systems will be allowed. This gives the driver the freedom to modify different aspects of their dashboard as they see fit.

Another benefit that the Tegra K1 brings to the table is that it can receive software updates as these updates become available.  

"Advanced computational technologies are the foundation for turning automobiles into the most innovative, capable and desirable mobile devices in the future," said Thilo Koslowski, vice president and lead automotive analyst at Gartner. "By offering over-the-air upgradeability of these technologies, automakers can improve existing in-vehicle features and offer new ones over the course of the vehicle lifecycle."

In addition, the Tegra K1 will be able to support a broad range of operating systems. It will be available as a visual computing module (VCM), which will allow for different systems in the vehicle to be upgraded.

The processor is currently being demonstrated at CES.

EnterpriseAI