Aurora, which is a new kid in the nascent self-driving car industry, has forged a strategic partnership with GPU manufacturer Nvidia. Nvidia’s CEO Jensen Huang spilled the beans at the yearly tech trade show CES 2018 that his company would be providing the new powerful ‘Xavier’ processor to the young startup.
Aurora’s CEO Chris Urmson also confirmed the development, claiming that Xavier processor will be one of the critical factors that will be powering its soon-to-be-launched self-driving cars.
Xavier processor is Nvidia’s answer to the pressing need for a highly proficient processor in the upcoming self-driving car industry. The chipmaker giant claims that its new powerful processor can dole out 30 trillion operations per second after sapping up only 30 watts of power. It further claims that this processor is 15 times more powerful than its predecessor.
Nvidia over the years has been leaving no stone unturned to venture into new businesses like self-driving cars and investing massively in new technologies like artificial intelligence (AI). This evidently has been done to successfully diversify from its traditional GPU manufacturing business, with the company’s chip business having a formidable presence in the gaming, mobile computing and automotive industry.
Meanwhile, Aurora has been living a highly secretive life ever since its inception last year. Very few know about this young self-driving startup, which has been founded by the industry veterans hailing from big names like Google & Uber. However, this reclusive startup came out from the obscurity last week after announcing partnership with Volkswagen Group and Hyundai. Both auto giants will be working with Aurora to commercially launch self-driving electric cars in major cities by 2021.
Now this latest partnership with Nvidia has brought further attention to this recluse startup. Only time will prove how much of an impact will this young startup have on this promising industry, where big names from the tech and auto world have already made a beeline.