NVIDIA Atlan SoC with Grace-Next CPU and Ampere-Next GPU pictured

NVIDIA to announce Atlan SoC

We received a render of the upcoming NVIDIA system on a chip.

Unfortunately, no description was provided along with the picture so we are not entirely sure about the specifications. What we do know is that NVIDIA Atlan is the next-generation SoC for the automobile industry. It seems that NVIDIA is still using names from the Aquaman franchise. Back in 2019, NVIDIA announced Orin SoC, which was named after the first ruler of the Atlantis. Today NVIDIA is announcing Atlan SoC, named after Orin’s father.

The Atlan SoC features Grace-Next CPU and Ampere-Next GPU. The chip also features integrated Bluefield which a data processing unit (DPU). We were actually a bit confused with the annotations on this picture because apparently the CPU and GPU annotations were swapped. That said, it would seem that the Atlan SoC features 12 cores, just as many like Orin. The same could be said about GPU structure, although we are not sure about the number of cores (could be different for this architecture).

Grace CPU returns no results, so it might be an internal name for a new CPU architecture. It is worth noting NVIDIA was rumored to be working on GPU architecture named after Grace Hopper.

NVIDIA will officially announce Atlan SoC at GTC 2021. We expect to hear more about this chip and products based on this chip later today.

NVIDIA Atlan SoC, Source: VideoCardz

A Data Center on Wheels: NVIDIA Unveils DRIVE Atlan Autonomous Vehicle Platform

Next-generation SoC to deliver more than 1,000 TOPS and equipped with BlueField DPU.

The next stop on the NVIDIA DRIVE roadmap is Atlan.

During today’s opening keynote of the GPU Technology Conference, NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang unveiled the upcoming generation of AI compute for autonomous vehicles, NVIDIA DRIVE Atlan. A veritable data center on wheels, Atlan centralizes the vehicle’s entire compute infrastructure into a single system-on-a-chip.

While vehicles are packing in more and more compute technology, they’re lacking the physical security that comes with data center-level processing. Atlan is a technical marvel for safe and secure AI computing, fusing all of NVIDIA’s technologies in AI, automotive, robotics, safety and BlueField data centers.

The next-generation platform will achieve an unprecedented 1,000 trillion operations per second (TOPS) of performance and an estimated SPECint score of more than 100 (SPECrate2017_int) — greater than the total compute in most robotaxis today. Atlan is also the first SoC to be equipped with an NVIDIA BlueField data processing unit (DPU) for trusted security, advanced networking and storage services.

While Atlan will not be available for a couple of years, software development is well underway. Like NVIDIA DRIVE Orin, the next-gen platform is software compatible with previous DRIVE compute platforms, allowing customers to leverage their existing investments across multiple product generations.

“To achieve higher levels of autonomy in more conditions, the number of sensors and their resolutions will continue to increase,” Huang said. “AI models will get more sophisticated. There will be more redundancy and safety functionality. We’re going to need all of the computing we can get.”

Advancing Performance at Light Speed
Autonomous vehicle technology is developing faster than it has in previous years, and the core AI compute must advance in lockstep to support this critical progress.

Cars and trucks of the future will require an optimized AI architecture not only for autonomous driving, but also for intelligent vehicle features like speech recognition and driver monitoring. Upcoming software-defined vehicles will be able to converse with occupants: answering questions, providing directions and warning of road conditions ahead.

Atlan is able to deliver more than 1,000 TOPS — a 4x gain over the previous generation — by leveraging NVIDIA’s latest GPU architecture, new Arm CPU cores and deep learning and computer vision accelerators.The platform architecture provides ample compute horsepower for the redundant and diverse deep neural networks that will power future AI vehicles and leaves headroom for developers to continue adding features and improvements.

This high-performance platform will run autonomous vehicle, intelligent cockpit and traditional infotainment applications concurrently.

A Guaranteed Shield with BlueField
Like every generation of NVIDIA DRIVE, Atlan is designed with the highest level of safety and security.

As a data-center-infrastructure-on-a-chip, the NVIDIA BlueField DPU is architected to handle the complex compute and AI workloads required for autonomous vehicles. By combining the industry-leading ConnectX network adapter with an array of Arm cores, BlueField offers purpose-built hardware acceleration engines with full programmability to deliver “zero-trust” security to prevent data breaches and cyberattacks.

This secure architecture will extend the safety and reliability of the NVIDIA DRIVE platform for vehicle generations to come. NVIDIA DRIVE Orin vehicle production timelines start in 2022, and Atlan will follow, sampling in 2023 and slated for 2025 production vehicles.