Nvidia Unveils Solution For Fully Autonomous Self-Driving Cars

Nvidia Drive PX Pegasus supercomputer AI to deliver automotive autonomy.

Nvidia has announced its audacious new ‘Drive PX Pegasus’ supercomputer, claiming it to be the first artificial intelligence (AI) computer system designed to drive fully autonomous self-driving ‘robotaxis’.

The Nvidia Pegasus is apparently capable of ‘Level 5’ autonomy. For self-driving evangelists, ‘Level 5’ is the holy grail of self-driving cars: no pedals, no steering wheel, and no need whatsoever for anyone to ever take control.

It is said to process over 320 trillion operations per second – an amount some 10 times more powerful than its own Nvidia built predecessor.

The new system, codenamed Pegasus, extends the NVIDIA® DRIVE™ PX AI computing platform to handle Level 5 driverless vehicles.

Good things; small packages

Crucially, compared to the majority of other AI based autonomous hardware and software, the Pegasus chip is only around the size of a vehicle license plate, and looks set to decrease in size even further by this time next year. The software use by Pegasus is no less advanced, utilizing advanced AI algorithms and high definition 3D maps operating in real time through a cloud based system.

Supply and demand

Pegasus is already in demand from manufacturers, several of whom already have deals with Nvidia. Nvidia however, also intend to market Pegasus to the hundreds of other car companies competing to develop and release autonomous cars during the second half of 2018.

CEO Jensen Huang has been diversifying Nvidia’s hardware and software focus beyond gaming in recent years. “Creating a fully self-driving car is one of society’s most important endeavours – and one of the most challenging to deliver,” Huang said on Tuesday at the GPU Technology Conference in Munich, Germany.

Big name partnerships

Nvidia currently has partnerships with some well-known brands, including Toyota, Audi, Tesla, Volvo, and even Chinese search engine giant, Baidu.

Nvidia only entered into the self-driving car market in 2015 with the Drive PX super computer. A more powerful variant, called Drive PX2 followed in 2016. In the same year, Nvidia released Xavier, a full AI brain for autonomous vehicles. Pegasus is the next extension of that system.