Nvidia Announces X1 SoC

[[Coi] Mr.CLuBBeR]

Will help drive auto-piloted cars

You can’t buy driverless cars just yet, but Nvidia is hoping to change that over time with its new Tegra X1 system-on-a-chip. The SoC is an offshoot of Nvidia’s K1 chip and is based off of the company’s Maxwell GPU architecture, which is currently implemented in its GeForce GTX 980 and 970 graphics cards. While consumer-grade self driving cars are still aways away, the X1 is being designed to help chip away at that (no pun intended).

A look at Nvidia's new Drive CX interface

The chip features 256 CUDA cores and 8 CPU cores. Nvidia is saying the X1 offers nearly 2x the performance improvement over its K1 SoC, which Nvidia used in its Shield tablet, while being nearly 2x more energy efficient. Nvidia equated the power of the X1 to Microsoft’s Xbox One, but requiring roughly one-tenth the power draw. The green team touted the X1 as “the world’s first teraflops mobile processor.” While the first computer to hit one teraflop came out all the way back in 2001, it consumed a massive one million watts, which is magnitudes more than the X1’s roughly 10-watt TDP equivalent.

Nvidia's Drive CX is the company's new digital cockpit computer

Nvidia is banking a lot on the future of cars and the company’s CEO Jen-hsun Huang was on stage to say that he believes they will offer the “most advanced computers in the world.” To drive some of this home (again, no pun intended), the company created its Drive CX cockpit computer which uses the X1. The computer will be able to power the displays in the car, such as the front RPM HUD, and will be able to generate over 16 million pixels. This cockpit computer will also support surround view cameras on the outside of the car, so the car is well aware of its surroundings.

Nvidia's Drive PX is the company's newly announced auto-pilot car computer.

While the road to automated driving cars is a difficult one, the company deduced that there are four major obstacles to overcome: these cars must be able to model out the environment, have a sense of situational awareness, be able to path find, and be able to learn. To combat these issues, Nvidia is working with car manufacturers to integrate its new Nvidia Drive PX system, which uses two X1 SoCs. With this system, these smart cars will offer 12 camera inputs, CUDA programmability, and what the company is referring to as a “deep neural network,” which will pull data together using a cloud-based system. With these tools, the car will be able to detect people, signs, different car types (like ambulances and police cars if need be), and will also be able to tell if a civilian is stepping outside of his car. According to Nvidia, this set up will be able to classify up to 150 objects at once.
On stage, Nvidia revealed that it is working with car manufacturer Audi to implement these systems. While a lot of these tools are currently focused on assisting drivers, according to Audi’s Executive VP of Electronics Development Ricky Hudi, self-driving cars from the company are coming in the not-too-distant future.
How do you feel about self driving cars? Think they’ll happen? Let us know in the comments below.


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