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5. NVIDIA Corporation Business Report FY ended Jan. 2019

NVIDIA Corporation Business Report FY ended Jan. 2019

Factors
1) Net Sales
-The Company’s net sales in the fiscal year ended January 27, 2019 totaled USD 11,716 million, an increase of 20.6% over the previous fiscal year. The Company had growth across all of four of its operating markets: gaming, professional visualization, datacenter, and automotive.

2) Automotive
-In the fiscal year ended January 27, 2019, the Company’s operations in the Automotive market had sales of USD 641 million, an increase of 14.9% over the previous year. Increased demand for infotainment modules and the Company’s DRIVE platforms, as well as an increased number of development agreements with automotive companies all contributed to the increased sales.

Business Partnerships

-The Company has partnered for more than 370 organizations, including OEMs, suppliers, mapping companies and university research institutions.

Contracts

-On November 20, the Company announced it will sell its DRIVE AGX Xavier chip to Chinese electric vehicle startups XPeng Motors, Singulato Motors and SF Motors to develop autonomous driving technology.

• XPENG Motors, a startup based in Guangzhou, China, along with Desay SV Automotive, will use the DRIVE AGX Xavier chip for its level 3 automated driving system scheduled for production vehicles by 2020.
• DRIVE AGX Xavier will also power upcoming vehicles from Beijing-based Singulato Motors, a startup developing software-defined, customizable EVs, for level 3 autonomous driving, which is scheduled to begin production in 2020
• SF Motors, which plans to launch its first electric crossover, the SF5, in 2019, will also utilize the DRIVE AGX Xavier chip.

(From a press release on November 20, 2018)

-Subaru will employ the Company’s AI systems in its advanced development of autonomous driving technology, aiming to put the technology into practical application in the late 2020s. Subaru has built prototype vehicles featuring autonomous driving technology based on the Company’s AI systems and started field testing. Subaru did not elaborate on the timing when it would install the Company’s technology on a production model, but stated that it would use the prototype in the development process, aiming to establish the technologies at an early date. The prototype is based on the Subaru Impreza compact sedan. The car has eight camera sensors and an intelligent ECU. Subaru plans to achieve practical application of Level 2 autonomous driving systems for highway applications in 2024, and then upgrade its driver assistance technologies to enable autonomous driving on general public roads. (From an article in the Nikkan Jidosha Shimbun on October 23, 2018)

-Veoneer, Inc. announced that it has developed the Zeus supercomputer, which is designed to meet the requirements for level 4 Autonomous Driving with Zenuity’s Autonomous Driving software stack, based on the NVIDIA DRIVE AGX Xavier running NVIDIA DRIVE OS. The supercomputer Zeus is an ADAS/AD ECU that fuses data from cameras, radars and other sensors, interprets the situation and takes required action. Veoneer and Zenuity, the joint venture between Veoneer and Volvo Cars, have developed the Zeus board. Veoneer is responsible for hardware and basic software, while Zenuity is responsible for Autonomous Driving feature software development and vehicle integration. (From a press release on October 10, 2018)

-On July 11, Daimler announced that as part of their alliance to deploy highly automated and driverless vehicles to urban areas, Bosch and Daimler have specified the computing power needed for their prospective systems. The two companies have selected and signed an agreement with the Company as a supplier for the AI platform they require. Under this contract, the Company will provide its DRIVE AGX Pegasus platform powered by high-performance AI automotive processors along with system software that will process the vehicle driving algorithms generated by Bosch and Daimler using machine-learning methods. As a result, the ECU network will be capable of generating a computing capacity of hundreds of trillion operations per second. Bosch and Daimler will also be able to tap Nvidia’s expertise to help develop the platform. (From a press release on July 11)

-The Company’s research and development expenditure in the fiscal year ended January 27, 2019 increased by 32.2% over the previous fiscal year, primarily due to an increase in the number of employees and other associated costs, including infrastructure costs and compensation expenses.

Technological Alliance

-On October 10, Volvo Cars announced that it is partnering with the Company for the development of a highly advanced, AI-capable core computer for the next generation of Volvo cars. The core computer is based on the Company’s DRIVE AGX Xavier technology and will allow Volvo Cars to implement an advanced computing platform for its new cars based on the forthcoming Scalable Product Architecture 2 (SPA 2) vehicle platform. The first car with the new core computer is scheduled to be launched in the early 2020s.The new computing platform will leverage the Company’s advances in AI as well as its unrivalled computing power, allowing Volvo Cars to take significant steps forward in implementing advanced driver-assistance systems, energy management technology, and on-board personalization options. In adding advanced 360-degree perception capabilities and a driver monitoring system, the core computer will help Volvo Cars safely introduce fully autonomous cars. (From a press release on October 10, 2018)

-On September 13, the Company announced that it will collaborate with Isuzu in developing next-generation trucks featuring advanced driver assistance systems and autonomous driving technology making use of the NVIDIA DRIVE AGX platform for automobiles. Isuzu will advance the development of 360-degree perception, advanced lane keeping, and adaptive cruise control features using the DRIVE AGX platform, aiming to put autonomous driving technology into practical application. The truck maker will accelerate the development of autonomous driving technologies, designating them as a priority area of its mid-term business plan from the fiscal year starting in April 2018. (From an article in the Nikkan Jidosha Shimbun on September 15, 2018)

-On September 13, the Company and Yamaha announced that they will collaborate on the development of autonomous machines. Yamaha will enter the unmanned agriculture vehicle market and apply the Company’s new Jetson AGX Xavier artificial intelligence computer to autonomous machines that it will develop in the future. This was revealed by the Company’s CEO Jensen Huang in his keynote address at the "GTC Japan 2018" event held in Tokyo. The Japanese manufacturer will develop vehicles that can implement the odometry, localization, mapping, vision and perception using the Jetson AGX Xavier’s processing capacity. Yamaha has been independently developing unmanned agriculture vehicles, last-mile vehicles, and other products. For these machines, Yamaha will standardize its platform on Jetson AGX Xavier to reduce costs and increase development speed. Yamaha will develop an unmanned agriculture vehicle on a new platform and conduct verification testing of it next year. The new unmanned agriculture vehicle is expected to be released in markets outside Japan in the fiscal year ending in March 2021. (From an article in the Nikkan Jidosha Shimbun on September 14, 2018)

-Maxim Integrated Products announced that it will collaborate with the Company  to support their DRIVE Pegasus Level 5 full-autonomous driving and DRIVE Xavier Level 4 autonomous driving system platforms. The Company will use Maxim Integrated Products' Automotive Safety Integrity Level rated voltage and power monitoring technology, as well as SerDes technology to realize the industry's first Level 5 autonomous driving system. Maxim Integrated Products' next-generation 6Gbps GMSL SerDes technology satisfies the requirements of high data rates, complex interconnection, and data integrity, for automotive infotainment, advanced driver assistance systems, and autonomous driving. This technology also provides safety and flexibility to establish autonomous driving systems such as DRIVE Pegasus and DRIVE Xavier platforms. (From an article in the Nikkan Jidosha Shimbun on February 27, 2018)

-The Company and Continental announced that they are partnering to create AI self-driving vehicle systems based on the NVIDIA DRIVE platform, with a planned market introduction in 2021 for level 3 features. The partnership will enable the production of AI computer systems that scale from automated Level 2 features through full Level 5 self-driving capabilities, where the vehicle has no steering wheel or pedals. Continental and the Company will initially develop highly automated driving features, including 360-degree perception and automatic lane changing on highways, plus the ability to merge in traffic. In addition, the system will integrate HD maps, enabling the vehicle to localize themselves and provide mapping updates. (From a press release on February 5, 2018)

Product development

NVIDIA DRIVE AutoPilot Level 2+ automated driving system
-The Company announced the world’s first commercially available Level 2+ automated driving system, NVIDIA DRIVE AutoPilot, which integrates multiple breakthrough AI technologies to enable supervised self-driving vehicles will go into production in 2020. As a Level 2+ self-driving solution, NVIDIA DRIVE AutoPilot uniquely provides full self-driving autopilot capabilities, including highway merge, lane change, lane splits, personal mapping, driver monitoring, AI copilot capabilities and advanced in-cabin visualizations. Continental and ZF have announced Level 2+ self-driving solutions based on NVIDIA DRIVE, with production starting in 2020. DRIVE AutoPilot integrates high-performance NVIDIA Xavier system-on-a-chip (SoC) processors and the latest NVIDIA DRIVE Software to process many deep neural networks (DNNs) for perception as well as complete surround camera sensor data from outside the vehicle and inside the cabin. DRIVE AutoPilot is part of the open, flexible NVIDIA DRIVE platform, which is being used by hundreds of companies to build autonomous vehicle solutions. The new Level 2+ system complements the NVIDIA DRIVE AGX Pegasus system that provides Level 5 capabilities for robotaxis. (From a press release on January 7, 2019)

NVIDIA DRIVE Constellation simulation platform
-The Company introduced a cloud-based system for testing autonomous vehicles using photorealistic simulation that will allow developers to test autonomous cars safely. Available in the third quarter of 2018, the NVIDIA DRIVE Constellation is a computing platform based on two different servers. The first server runs NVIDIA DRIVE Simulator software to simulate autonomous vehicle sensor output, such as cameras, lidar and radar. The second server contains the NVIDIA DRIVE Pegasus AI car computer that runs the autonomous vehicle software stack and processes the simulated sensor data. Driving commands from DRIVE Pegasus are fed back to the simulator, completing the digital feedback loop, which occurs 30 times a second, to validate that algorithms and software are operating the simulated vehicle correctly. DRIVE Simulator software generates photo real data streams to create a range of testing environments by simulating rainstorms, snowstorms, blinding glare, limited vision at night, and different types of road surfaces. Dangerous situations can be scripted in the simulation to test the autonomous car’s ability to react without putting anyone in danger. (From a press release on March 27, 2018)

NVIDIA DRIVE AGX autonomous driving platform
-The NVIDIA DRIVE AGX is a scalable, open autonomous vehicle computing platform. The platform features two products, the Xavier system on a chip (SoC) which combines various processing cores and the NVIDIA DRIVE AGX Pegasus system with an architecture built on two Xavier SoCs and two Tensor Core GPUs. The Pegasus is capable of processing data from sensors including cameras, radar and lidar while also processing position and route prediction information. The Xavier is capable of performing 30 trillion operations per second (TOPS) while consuming only 30 watts, while the Pegasus is capable of processing 320 TOPS.
The software in the DRIVE AGX platform enables various in-vehicle functionalities, including DRIVE IX for driver monitoring and user experience and DRIVE AR for visualization of the car’s perception of its environment. Currently more than 450 organizations are using the NVIDIA DRIVE AGX platform.
>>> Click here for reports on NVIDIA DRIVE AGX