Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

CTOnews.com, September 21 (Xinhua)-- chip giant Nvidia has officially unveiled a new generation of "DRIVE Thor" computing platform dedicated to self-driving and auxiliary driving as well as a range of digital functions, including in-car entertainment.

According to reports, NVIDIA DRIVE Thor can achieve AI performance balance, integrate AV and Cockpit on one computer, and can centralize all intelligent car functions on a small AI computer, thus realizing safe and reliable self-driving.

CTOnews.com learned that the new generation of automobile SoC is based on the latest CPU and GPU. CPU part of the Grace,GPU from NVIDIA has Hopper and Ada technology, integrates 77 billion transistors, 1 billion more than the RTX 4090 graphics card, and can provide 2000 teraflops performance, 2 times that of Altan and 8 times that of Orin. You can even "exchange fire" between two pieces of SoC through NVLink-C2C chip interconnection technology, and the two chips will be used as an entire monolithic platform.

Nvidia says automakers can customize Thor super chips in a variety of ways. Manufacturers can use all the computing power of the chip for autopilot computing, or assign it to AI or entertainment applications in the cabin, as well as driving assistance systems.

It can take over the self-driving and intelligent cockpit systems, and can drive Linux, QNX and Android systems at the same time. In the past, the functions of multiple systems / chips can be realized on Thor.

Like Orin, Thor uses the Nvidia DRIVE software development kit, which is designed for ASIL D functions and is based on a variable-size architecture. Developers can easily migrate past software development results to the new Thor platform.

On the basis of strong performance, RIVE Thor also brings a great improvement in the accuracy of deep neural networks. It is the first time that a morph engine has been integrated into the family of self-driving platforms, which is part of the core of Nvidia GPU Tensor. They can process the video in a single frame, which improves the processing power of the computing platform. With the integrated FP8 precision calculation, Thor eliminates the data loss in the process of converting 32bit floating-point data to 8bit integer data, and improves the accuracy of data transmission. It also integrates the ARM Poseidon AE core, making it the most powerful processor in the industry.

Another feature of Thor chip is multi-domain computing, that is, self-driving data and in-car entertainment data can be calculated at the same time, and the two parallel computing are isolated from each other. So even on the same chip, a car can run Linux, QNX and Android operating systems at the same time. In addition, Thor itself has the ability to separate specific tasks, so automakers can improve overall efficiency without having to rely on ECU arranged all over the car.

DRIVE Thor replaces the previous NVIDIA DRIVE Orin system and Altan, and aims to carry models from major car companies in 2025. Cruise, GM's self-driving unit, said last week that it had developed its own chip, which would be deployed by 2025.

Nvidia announced that DRIVE Thor's first customer was ZEEKR, owned by Chinese automaker Geely.

Danny Shapiro, head of Nvidia's automotive business, said DRIVE Thor would be able to replace a large number of chips and cables in cars and reduce overall system costs, but he did not give specific savings.

He said that the DRIVE Orin system has been confirmed to be used in Chinese car company Xiaopeng's new intelligent SUV and Chinese self-driving start-up "Light Boat Zhihang".

"there are a lot of companies that are doing great things, doing things that are good for mankind, and we want to support them," he said. "We are working with these Chinese customers when we do have some export restrictions on products used in data centers. Come up with a suitable alternative."

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