Nvidia reveals 'supercomputer' for self-driving cars

Nvidia has unveiled Xavier, a new "supercomputer" system-on-a-chip (SoC) which will act as the control center for future autonomous vehicles. On Wednesday at the GPU Technology Conference Europe in Amsterdam, Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang revealed the SoC, branding the chip the "greatest SoC endeavor I have ever known." Dubbed Xavier, the SoC integrates a new GPU architecture called Volta, a new 8-core CPU architecture and a new computer vision accelerator. The US chip maker says the processor can deliver up to 20 trillion operations per second in performance, while only consuming 20 watts of power -- an important aspect for vehicles. In addition, as the chip has been developed with the vehicle industry in mind, Xavier will be compliant with automotive standards, such as the ISO 26262 safety specification.