In a boost for its automobile chip business, Nvidia Corp. today announced a partnership with Mercedes-Benz to build “software-defined” autonomous vehicles powered by its Drive AGX Orin system-on-chip. 

Nvidia senior director of automotive Danny Shapiro touted the deal as the biggest collaboration in Nvidia’s history during a press briefing. “We’re bringing the car up to the standard of iPhones,” he said.

The Drive AGX Orin (pictured) is an upcoming system-on-chip for vehicles Nvidia plans to launch in 2022. It will contain a graphics processing unit to run the artificial intelligence models that power a self-driving car’s autonomy features.

Nvidia has shared several details about the Drive AGX Orin so far. Notably, it the module will use same Ampere chip architecture as the chipmaker’s flagship A100 graphics processing unit for data centers.

The Drive AGX Orin is reportedly set to feature 17 billion transistors, or twice as many as the previous-generation Drive AGX Xavier. It’s consequently expected to be about seven times as fast. For reference, Nvidia’s A100 data center GPU has 54 billion transistors.

The Drive AG Orin will also feature no fewer than 12 central processing units to handle general-purpose processing tasks. These CPUs are set to use Arm Ltd.’s Cortex-A78 chip design, which debuted in March and offers 20% better sustained performance than its predecessor.

Mercedes-Benz will develop an autonomous driving system based on the Drive AGX Orin with Nvidia and incorporate it into multiple upcoming vehicle ranges. According to the companies, models equipped with the system will have the ability to transport users “address to address” along regular routes. They will also provide parking assistance and related automation capabilities.

The automated driving features will operate at SAE Level 2 and Level 3 autonomy, while the automated parking feature will go up to SAE Level 4. Those are the three middle tiers of SAE International’s five-tier ranking system for self-driving vehicles. The highest tier, Level 5, is reserved for the not-yet-realized category of vehicles that will be capable of driving as well as a human in all conditions. 

Another key goal for the project is upgradability. In particular, Mercedes-Benz is looking to allow customers to download new features for their cars via software updates. Such an update mechanism could facilitate over-the-air safety enhancements and might help Mercedes-Benz generate more revenue from cars by offering users the option to purchase extra features or subscriptions.  

“This new platform will become an efficient, centralized and software-defined system in our future Mercedes-Benz vehicles,” said Ola Källenius, the chairman of the management board at Mercedes-Benz and its parent company Daimler AG.” These new capabilities and upgrades will be downloaded from the cloud, improving safety, increasing value and extending the joy of ownership for all Mercedes-Benz customers.”

In an announcement event today, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang went ever further. “The definition of a car will change forever,” he said. “The car is the starting point. Behind it will be thousands of engineers. They’re your personal software and artificial intelligence lab that will stay with you for the life of the car.”

The deal is a high-profile vote of confidence in Nvidia’s Drive AGX product line.”This is the biggest partnership ever announced in the automobile industry,” Huang said. That’s a significant statement given that Nvidia already had 450 auto industry players working with Drive chips in 2018. The large scope of the partnership also speaks to the importance established carmakers such as Daimler are placing on autonomous driving in their long-term strategy.

Mercedes-Benz’s autonomous vehicles may face considerable competition when they start rolling off the production line in 2024. Volvo has set a goal of shipping self-driving SUVs to customers in 2022, while General Motors Co. may start production of  its Origin self-driving shuttle even sooner.

With reporting from Robert hof

Image: Nvidia