DETROIT (Reuters) – Volvo Cars said Monday that starting next year it will use a new generation of high-performance chips from Nvidia Corp to enable more autonomous driving functions in future vehicles.
Volvo is part of a crowd of new and established automakers who are putting digital processing power over horsepower as they try Tesla Inc. to catch up.
Tesla, the world’s most valuable automaker, has led the way in software-driven features and functional capabilities, including equipping its cars and SUVs with powerful and expensive on-board computers that can perform complex tasks such as automated driving. upgraded over the air.
For Nvidia, the Volvo agreement, a similar deal involving the start-up of Faraday Future electric vehicles and other agreements expected in the coming weeks, mark a restart of growth for the gaming and data center processor company’s automotive business.
“Nvidia’s pipeline of auto orders has grown to many billions of dollars,” Danny Shapiro, Nvidia’s senior automotive director, told reporters ahead of the company’s GTC21 conference on Monday. The sales of the company’s automotive activities decreased by 23% in 2020.
Volvo Cars, owned by China’s Geely Holding, said it will use Nvidia’s new Drive Orin system, with much more processing power than the current Nvidia chips used in Volvo vehicles, starting with a new generation of XC90 sports utility that will be launched next year.
In a nod to Tesla, Volvo said that vehicles equipped with the new Nvidia Orin systems will be ‘hardware ready’ for autonomous driving features, such as a ‘Highway Pilot’ function that will be activated via a software download ‘when it is verified that it safe for individual geographic locations and conditions. “
Faraday Future said it will offer autonomous driving, parking and a ‘call’ feature in its FF 91 model due out in 2022. Tesla already offers a ‘paging’ system that allows a car to navigate through a parking space at a distance from the owner.
Rival automakers, including Daimler AG and several Chinese electric vehicle startups, are taking a similar approach.
Nvidia also said on Monday that it is developing a new on-board computer system on a chip called Atlan that will give a car the computing power currently found in a data center. This chip should be ready for 2025 models, Nvidia said.
Reporting by Joe White; Editing by Nick Zieminski