New Nvidia system designed to power fully autonomous cars

Current picture: Although companies are already testing fully autonomous vehicles, most are very rough prototypes. On the compute side, most of the cars today have multiple PCs or servers in the trunk consuming thousands of watts of power.

"This is the path to production," says Danny Shapiro, senior director for automotive at Nvidia.

The competition: Intel and Qualcomm are also pursuing a role in the autonomous car industry with each company having an area of strength, according to analyst Patrick Moorhead, president of Moor Insights and Strategy.

• Nvidia has the early lead on the processing and machine learning side.

• Intel recently acquired MobileEye, which is a leader in advanced driver assistance systems.
• Qualcomm is doing well when it comes to modems and infotainment systems.

Yes, but: Nvidia's move is a big one, Moorhead says.

"It has been possible to have the required compute level in a datacenter and even filling the back of the car, but it sucked way too much power and was too large and took too much cooling to be an effective auto solution," he says.