Bosch, Nvidia Partner on Artificial Intelligence Supercomputer for Autonomous Cars

Massively powerful unit could make automated driving "possible in every situation" by the next decade, says Bosch CEO.


At the Bosch Connected World 2017 conference in Berlin, Germany on Tuesday, Bosch and California-based technology company Nvidia announced a collaboration to build an onboard computer with the artificial intelligence necessary to operate a fully self-driving car.

Bosch CEO Dr. Volkmar Denner said in a statement that the companies "want automated driving to be possible in every situation," and that as early as "the next decade, driverless cars will also be part of everyday life."

In order to make that happen, the Bosch system will be based on the Nvidia Drive PX technology already installed on Tesla vehicles, but will also utilize Nvidia's upcoming "Xavier" AI system-on-chip, which is "capable of 20 trillion operations per second while drawing just 20 watts of power, meaning the Bosch car computer should be smaller and cheaper than Nvidia's current Drive PX 2 unit," according to Ars Technica.

Bosch announced that production of the unit wouldn't begin until "the beginning of the next decade."