Introducing Xavier, the NVIDIA AI supercomputer for the future of autonomous transporation

"This is the greatest SoC endeavour I have ever known, and we have been building chips for a very long time", Jen-Hsun Huang said to the conference's 1,600 attendees.

Xavier is a complete system-on-chip (SoC), integrating a new GPU architecture called Volta, a custom 8 core CPU architecture, and a new computer vision accelerator. The processor will deliver 20 TOPS (trillion operations per second) of performance, while consuming only 20 watts of power. As the brain of a self-driving car, Xavier is designed to be compliant with critical automotive standards, such as the ISO 26262 functional safety specification.

Packed with 7 billion transistors, and manufactured using cutting-edge 16nm FinFET process technology, a single Xavier AI processor will be able to replace today's DRIVE PX 2 configured with dual mobile SoCs and dual discrete GPUs - at a fraction of the power consumption.

Because autonomous driving is an incredibly compute-intense process, the need for an efficient AI processor is paramount. Xavier will bring self-driving car technology to automakers, tier 1 suppliers, start-ups and R&D organisations that are building autonomous vehicles, whether cars, trucks, shuttles or taxis.

Xavier samples will be available the fourth quarter of 2017 to automakers, tier 1 suppliers, start-ups and research institutions who are developing self-driving cars.