MediaTek and NVIDIA Team up for Automotive AI

With more and more auto manufacturers pushing for smarter vehicles, there’s been a considerably growing demand for more powerful smart automotive platforms, going beyond the simple act of pairing your smartphone with your car’s Bluetooth console (think ‘K.I.T.T.’ from Knight Rider). It’s no surprise then that we’ve seen an uptick of specially-designed hardware and software solutions that provide entertainment and navigation features for drivers and passengers alike.

With that being said, MediaTek’s push towards putting more AI tech into everyday consumer products has certainly yielded some very interesting results, and the company’s newly-announced collaboration with PC gaming giant NVIDIA aims to do the same, at least in terms of automotive applications.

More specifically, the mobile chip manufacturer formally announced that it has entered into a partnership with NVIDIA to develop new AI-powered software for vehicles, with the goal of creating a “smart cabin” for drivers and passengers. This collaboration will enable MediaTek to develop automotive SoCs, which will in turn integrate a new NVIDIA GPU “chiplet” with support for NVIDIA AI and graphics IP. Interestingly, these chiplets will be connected by specially-developed interconnect technology, at least according to MediaTek. Rick Tsai, Vice Chairman and CEO of MediaTek states:

“NVIDIA is a world-renowned pioneer and industry leader in AI and computing. With this partnership,
our collaborative vision is to provide a global one-stop shop for the automotive industry, designing the
next generation of intelligent, always-connected vehicles. Through this special collaboration with NVIDIA, we will together be able to offer a truly unique platform for the compute intensive, software-defined vehicle of the future.”

NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang says this combination of MediaTek and NVIDIA hardware will “enable new user experiences, enhanced safety and new connected services for all vehicle segments, from luxury to mainstream.”

MediaTek adds that its smart cabin solutions will run NVIDIA DRIVE OS, DRIVE IX, CUDA and TensorRT software technologies. This then allows consumers to experience a full range of AI cabin and cockpit functionality with integrated AI, safety, and security features as well.

While NVIDIA is more known to consumers as a PC and gaming-centric brand, the company does put a considerable amount of investment towards the development and production of AI and IoT (internet of things) technology, in addition to its powerful GPUs and processors.

The Taiwanese company further states that by allowing MediaTek to tap into NVIDIA’s core expertise in AI, cloud, graphics technology, software and pairing with NVIDIA ADAS solutions, we can expect to see further improvement to the capabilities of the Dimensity Auto platform, MediaTek’s flagship automotive software product. Dimensity Auto is designed for vehicles with support for compatible smart features.

With all that being said, it should be interesting to see how both companies approach this new partnership, both on hardware and business fronts.