Nvidia doesn’t make cars, of course, but continues to pump out upgrades to SoCs and software to power assisted and autonomous driving for vehicle manufacturers. CEO Jensen Huang offered up a few such announcements at GTC 2022.
The auto innovations Huang announced in his keynote were modest next a new H100 GPU and other significant innovations that push Nvidia further into status as a fullscale computing provider. However, Nvidia is viewed as a major innovator in the auto space in a three-way battle with Mobileye and now Qualcomm.
Auto items announced Tuesday include Drive Hyperion 9 software with the upcoming Drive Atlan SoC, destined to double the performance of the current Drive Orin-based architecture. The downside is that Hyperion 9 and Atlan are years off, and won’t ship until 2026.
Before then, BYD of Shenzhen, China, will adopt Drive Orin computers for its EVs going into production in the first half of 2023, Huang announced. Also Lucid Motors has revealed its DreamDrive Pro advanced driver-assistance system is being built on Nvidia Drive.
The Drive platform is now being in used by eight of 10 robotaxi innovators, seven of 10 autonomous trucking companies and 20 of 30 passenger EVs, Nvidia said. It is also relied upon in 28 of 30 autonomous vehicle data centers. The data center piece is important for communicating mapping and vehicle infotainment data as well as software upgrades, but Nvidia is explicit in saying its Drive systems use an array of sensors, radars and lidars to know when an obstacle is present that requires a brake to be applied.
Huang bragged that Nvidia’s automotive products pipeline for contracts has increased to $11 billion over the next six years, a number that is up from $8 billion last year.
While that may sound impressive, Nvidia’s auto products are are bringing in just 2% of revenues so far, having reached $566 million of nearly $27 billion in fiscal 2022.
It is still early days for autonomous driving support technology, and Nvidia is clearly one of the major powers in vehicle autonomous systems, alongside Mobileye, which Intel is spinning off to an IPO, and more recently Qualcomm, according to analysts.
“This is clearly a contested area with major players like Qualcomm and Intel/Mobileye and it remains to be seen what share of this market Nvidia will capture,” noted Jack Gold, an analyst at J. Gold Associates. “Nonetheless, it is a greenfield opportunity with major market potential.”
Added Sam Abuelsamid, principal analyst at Guidehouse Insights, “It’s going to be a tough three-way battle between these companies with NXP also grabbing some market share for the redundant computers for automated driving systems with its S32G platform.”
Abuelsamid noted that Mobileye “still has and will continue to have a lot of the market for ADAS and hands-free, eyes-free systems [but] will likely lose market share to both Nvidia and Qualcomm.”
He noted that GM is moving away from Mobileye to Qualcomm with the Cadillac Lyriq and next year’s Ultra Cruise system, while BMW is following suit.
Competition between industry players benefits the entire ecosystem, as Nvidia’s Danny Shapiro, vice president of automotive, noted in comments to reporters this week. “We don’t expect to win every deal,” he said, shortly after ticking off a long list of current customers.
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