NVIDIA Jetson Development Platform Hits Smart Cars With CUDA And Kepler Power

If you've been following NVIDIA's news blasts this past week, you know that they've revealed their next-generation chipset to be working with CUDA-capable GPUs. What's more, you'll have a bit of an idea what that means for mobile devices, the computing power they'll have extremely soon, and you'll be pumped up about that power coming to smart vehicles through their new developer program. This new developer kit goes by the name NVIDIA Jetson Development Platform – available to you right this minute!

This new platform is a big ol' amalgamation of metal and plastic, power and next-generation precision. What developers in the smart segment of the next generation of our everyday road-ready vehicles will be doing with this beast is optimizing their ideas for the processing power of NVIDIA's Tegra processors. Automakers will be able to work with this proof-of-concept in a tiny 1-DIN form that fits in a car stereo slot.

Jetson Development Platform package:

• Jetson main board

• Tegra VCM with automotive-grade Tegra 3 mobile processor

• Embedded Breakout Board (EBB) with a wide range of connectivity options

• NVIDIA CUDA-capable discrete GPU

• Wi-Fi, Bluetooth module, and GPS antennas

• 64 GB mSATA Drive

• Touchscreen display and cables

• Power supply and cables

• USB cable (mini-USB to USB)

• HDMI to DVI cable

With the 1-DIN model of the Jetson, you'll have the performance of a beastly NVIDIA Tegra VCM combined with the excellence of a Kepler-glass GPU. This GPU supports CUDA as well as OpenCV so any and all developers creating software for this setup will be able to do so with the following visual-based technologies:

• Pedestrian Detection

• Lane Departure Warnings

• Collision Avoidance

This development kit is made not just to make the developer's job awesome with the processing power of Tegra and Kepler, but to make their job as easy as possible so they can concentrate on what matters most – making their ideas a reality. Jetson is designed to help automakers overcome three key challenges, too, each of them allowing for quicker and easier implementation of forward-thinking technologies.

NVIDIA's Jetson Development Platform does the following:

1) Simplifies and streamlines the development of advanced driver assistance and connected car technologies.

2) Accelerates the transition to each new generation of mobile SoC, enabling automakers to better keep pace with the rapid innovation cycle in consumer electronics.

3) Reduces the number of processors and independent silver boxes needed to develop infotainment, navigation, computer vision and driver assistance capabilities.

Sound pretty good to you? Have a peek at the timeline we've laid out below for all the NVIDIA action you can handle from this past week alone! NVIDIA is ramping up for not just GPUs in your most masterful gaming desktop computers, not just for some of the most powerful mobile processor architectures in the mobile universe for your superphones and tablets, but for next-generation smart vehicles of all kinds, soon and very soon!