Volvo's new ES90 midsized luxury sedan boasts a powerful Nvidia Drive AGX Orin dual-configuration supercomputer, making it the company's most computationally advanced vehicle. This computing power, part of Volvo's 'Superset' tech stack, enables lightning-fast speeds (508 trillion operations per second) for various functionalities, including active safety features, sensor management, and efficient battery management.
The Orin system represents an eightfold increase in processing speed compared to its predecessor, allowing for improvements in Volvo's deep learning models (from 40 million to 200 million parameters). Built on the SPA2 architecture, the ES90, following the EX90, leverages Superset, a modular platform for efficient, safer vehicle production with over-the-air software updates.
Volvo aims to address the software challenges encountered with the EX90, which experienced delays and launched with fewer promised features. The ES90's advanced technology allows for future improvements in driver-assist technology and battery range via software updates, and improvements made to one vehicle will benefit the other.
Volvo envisions a future where continuous improvements are possible through software updates, enhancing safety and performance over time. The ES90 represents a significant step in this direction, prioritizing safety and advanced technology.
Volvo’s next electric vehicle, the ES90 midsized luxury sedan, sounds like its got some serious computing chops.
The new EV will come with a dual Nvidia Drive AGX Orin configuration, making it the “most powerful car Volvo ever created in terms of core computing capacity,” the company claims today. The new supercomputer is included as part of a single tech stack called Superset, which Volvo says will underpin all of its next-gen vehicles going forward.
The ES90 will be Volvo’s first vehicle to come with the Nvidia’s system-on-a-chip, enabling it to perform core functions at lightning fast speeds thanks to the computer’s abilities to perform 508 trillion operations per second (TOPS). This will come handy when managing functionalities such as “AI-based, state-of-the-art active safety features, car sensors and efficient battery management.”
508 trillion operations per second
Orin system also represents an “eightfold” improvement in processing speeds over the San Jose-based chipmaker’s Xavier computer that featured in the 2018 announcement of a team-up between Volvo and Nvidia on in-car hardware. The increased processing power to enable Volvo to gradually enhance its deep learning model and neural network “from 40 million to 200 million parameters,” the company says.
The ES90 will be built on Volvo’s SPA2 architecture and will be the second vehicle, after the EX90, to be based on its Superset tech stack. Superset is a modular engineering platform that the company says will be used to make safer cars, more efficiently, and to improve them over time through over-the-air software updates.
Tesla was the first company to introduce the idea of a connected vehicle with updateable software that could improve over timne. Now, the rest of the industry is scrambling to catch up by introducing their own upgradable vehicles. Volvo’s EX90 was intended to be the first major effort, but the electric SUV was delayed by software troubles, and when it eventually arrived it lacked many of its promised features.
Volvo says it envisions a future in which features such as driver assist technology and battery range are able to be improved over time thanks to this new tech stack. And improvements for the EX90 will be translatable to the ES90, and vice versa.
“The Volvo ES90 is one of the most technically advanced cars on the market today and is designed to be improved further with time,” says Anders Bell, Volvo’s chief engineering and technology officer, in a statement. “Built on our state-of-the-art Superset tech stack, the ES90 puts safety at the forefront.”
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