Step aside Tesla, because Nvidia has something scary on the road, one hurt Tesla and other companies that making their way into the self-driving technology. Gaming chip giant Nvidia has just announced a major partnership with the German-based engineering and electronics giant Bosch on self-driving car AI supercomputer. Nvidia made the big announcement this week.
According to the tech-focused website The Verge, the Santa Clara, California-based GPU behemoth is teaming with the Stuttgart, Germany-based electronics and engineering powerhouse Bosch on self-driving vehicles tech. The two companies announced they joining forces to work on the artificial intelligence and machine-learning systems for mass market autonomous vehicles. The news about the huge partnership was released at Bosch's Connected World Internet of things conference in Berlin, Germany.
The deal, according to multiple sources, will give Nvidia an entry point and eventually, go-to-market strategy for its self-driving technology. Bosch is no longer stranger when it comes to self-driving business. Bosch has already made some decent contribution in the self-driving arena. The German electronics and engineering giant have recently joined ZF as the two so-called tier-one suppliers, which allows the company to sell Nvidia's self-driving tech to major automakers. And today's announcement of Nvidia partnership will give Bosch an even bigger access to Nvidia's robust arsenal of self-driving software and hardware platform, and also wider market reach.
It's a transatlantic partnership on a colossal scale, involving two major players in their own industries. Bosch, the world's largest supplier of automotive components (measured by revenues) is teaming with Nvidia, the Santa Clara-based GPU behemoth best known for designing industry-leading graphics processing units (much known as GPUs) for the gaming market, and system on a chip ( or commonly known as SoCs) for the mobile computing market and automotive industry.
US-based Nvidia is well-known in the IT circle for its deep knowledge and experience when it comes to advanced computing. Nvidia's primary product line, the very popular Nvidia GeForce, competes with the likes of AMD, one of the most feared companies in the tech industry.
Today, Nvidia is making its entry in the world of artificial intelligence. From the company's core business, which is in computer graphics, Nvidia now provides GPU-accelerated computing for the gaming market, designers and scientists, and more recently, autonomous vehicles. According to Nvidia, the AI-powered self-driving car will be built on Nvidia's deep-learning software and hardware platform, while Bosch, which a well-known large auto supplier, will likely do the marketing things.
The news about Nvidia and Bosh partnership comes just days after Intel announced plans to acquire Mobileye, an Israeli-based tech company that develops advanced driver assistance systems for collision prevention and mitigation. Many analysts viewed Intel's whopping $15.3 billion Mobileye acquisition as a defensive move to thwart Nvidia's entry into the highly lucrative auto market and also to prevent the Israeli company from falling into rivals' hands.
In addition to the Bosch partnership, Nvidia is also moving deeper into autonomous trucking space, announcing a partnership with one of the world's largest makers of transport trucks, PACCAR, TechCrunch reported. The deal is said to be a big win for Nvidia that is because PACCAR is an industry leader and has a vast armada of global logistics fleets.
As for Nvidia-Bosch partnership, the main goal for two companies, for now, is to create a system that can enable vehicles to be trained quickly and updated over the air, using Bosch's AI-driven car computing system that will be based on Nvidia's Xavier and Drive PX technology.
In a recent interview with The Verge, Nvidia said that it would be providing the computing hardware and software platform, while the German-based Bosch would be focusing on developing vehicle sensors. The complete self-driving AI -powered computing system would then sell to major automakers across the globe.
