Nvidia’s AI processor business in China has been all but shuttered by the US Commerce Department, but its DRIVE Orin system-on-a-chip (SoC) for electric autonomous vehicles is still going strong.
More than a dozen corporate customers in China contribute to Nvidia’s automotive revenues, which are now running at a rate of over US$1 billion per year.
Several of Nvidia’s Chinese customers showcased their new electric vehicles (EVs) at the 21st Guangzhou International Automobile Exhibition held from November 17-26, including Denza, Human Horizons, Ji Yue, NIO, XPeng, Zeekr and BYD.
The Nvidia DRIVE Orin SoC is a central computer for intelligent vehicles that is capable of 254 trillion operations per second. Scalable from Level 2 advanced driving assistance systems (ADAS) to Level 5 fully autonomous vehicles, DRIVE Orin enables instantaneous and redundant processing of data from exterior and interior cameras, radar, lidar and ultrasonic sensors.