Nvidia Details New AI Chips and Autonomous Car Project With Mercedes (nytimes.com) 11
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: On Monday, [Jensen Huang, the chief executive of the chip-making giant Nvidia] said the company would begin shipping a new A.I. chip later this year, one that can do more computing with less power than previous generations of chips could. Known as the Vera Rubin, the chip has been in development for three years and is designed to fulfill A.I. requests more quickly and cheaply than its predecessors. Mr. Huang, who spoke during CES, an annual tech conference in Las Vegas, also discussed Nvidia's surprisingly ambitious work around autonomous vehicles. This year, Mercedes-Benz will begin shipping cars equipped with Nvidia self-driving technology comparable to Tesla's Autopilot.
Nvidia's new Rubin chips are being manufactured and will be shipped to customers, including Microsoft and Amazon, in the second half of the year, fulfilling a promise Mr. Huang made last March when he first described the chip at the company's annual conference in San Jose, Calif. Companies will be able to train A.I. models with one-quarter as many Rubin chips as its predecessor, the Blackwell. It can provide information for chatbots and other A.I. products for one-tenth of the cost. They will also be able to install the chips in data centers more quickly, courtesy of redesigned supercomputers that feature fewer cables. If the new chips live up to their promise, they could allow companies to develop A.I. at a lower cost and at least begin to respond to the soaring electrical demands of data centers being built around the world.
[...] On Monday, he said Nvidia had developed new A.I. software that would allow customers like Uber and Lucid to develop cars that navigate roads autonomously. It will share the system, called Alpamayo, to spread its influence and the appeal of Nvidia's chip technology. Since 2020, Nvidia has been working with Mercedes to develop a class of self-driving cars. They will begin shipping an early example of their collaboration when Mercedes CLA cars become available in the first half of the year in Europe and the United States. Mr. Huang said the company started working on self-driving technology eight years ago. It has more than a thousand people working on the project. "Our vision is that someday, every single car, every single truck, will be autonomous," Mr. Huang said. The Rubin chips are named for the astronomer Vera Rubin, a pioneering astronomer who helped find powerful evidence of dark matter.
Nvidia's new Rubin chips are being manufactured and will be shipped to customers, including Microsoft and Amazon, in the second half of the year, fulfilling a promise Mr. Huang made last March when he first described the chip at the company's annual conference in San Jose, Calif. Companies will be able to train A.I. models with one-quarter as many Rubin chips as its predecessor, the Blackwell. It can provide information for chatbots and other A.I. products for one-tenth of the cost. They will also be able to install the chips in data centers more quickly, courtesy of redesigned supercomputers that feature fewer cables. If the new chips live up to their promise, they could allow companies to develop A.I. at a lower cost and at least begin to respond to the soaring electrical demands of data centers being built around the world.
[...] On Monday, he said Nvidia had developed new A.I. software that would allow customers like Uber and Lucid to develop cars that navigate roads autonomously. It will share the system, called Alpamayo, to spread its influence and the appeal of Nvidia's chip technology. Since 2020, Nvidia has been working with Mercedes to develop a class of self-driving cars. They will begin shipping an early example of their collaboration when Mercedes CLA cars become available in the first half of the year in Europe and the United States. Mr. Huang said the company started working on self-driving technology eight years ago. It has more than a thousand people working on the project. "Our vision is that someday, every single car, every single truck, will be autonomous," Mr. Huang said. The Rubin chips are named for the astronomer Vera Rubin, a pioneering astronomer who helped find powerful evidence of dark matter.
The Wait is Over (Score:5, Funny)
Finally some AI news!
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This will really make me want to buy a Mercedes.
I love it when companies get in league with crypto-bros and AI. Moral fiber is overrated. The climate is going to hell from all of this, but then I'll be dead anyway. I'll get mine. F U. /s
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This will really make me want to buy a Mercedes.
Mercedes (like almost all of the car companies) have been working on assisted and self driving vehicles for, well, forever. This partnership suggests that they have decided it is better to buy than build (at least for now). FWIW, Nvidia has been promoting their various solutions for vehicles for around a decade now (their initial demo was in 2015). So, it takes around 10 years to get from demo to serious proposed deployments.
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This will really make me want to buy a Mercedes.
Mercedes (like almost all of the car companies) have been working on assisted and self driving vehicles for, well, forever. This partnership suggests that they have decided it is better to buy than build (at least for now). FWIW, Nvidia has been promoting their various solutions for vehicles for around a decade now (their initial demo was in 2015). So, it takes around 10 years to get from demo to serious proposed deployments.
While Nvidia has been working on autonomous driving for quite a while, the original Mercedes-Nvidia partnership was announced in 2020. At that time, the expectation was for a product in 2024 that would be Level 2/3 with a 50/50 revenue sharing for the autonomous system. So, the announcement this year is actually an acknowledgement that the original plan was delayed by two years.
Mercedes has been a pioneer for many automotive innovations. The issue with autonomous driving is that the AI processing needed
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This is an optional extra about $1300/year to actually use it.
North Carolina will be a great test (Score:1)
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Here in Scandinavia, road markings can be hidden by snow and ice for several months every year. You'd have to drive at the correct distance from rods sticking up through the snow at the side of the road, several m apart.
Alpamayo? Really? (Score:2)
Not sure what they were thinking, Alpamayo is one of the most dangerous climbs in the Andes. Beautiful mountains, but the death toll of the Cordillera Blanca is appalling. A single 1970 avalanche covered the entire town of Yungay and killed an estimated 20,000 people, while earlier avalanches have wiped out multiple other towns.