But graphics cards are also necessary in industries far removed from video gaming... And what this company is doing with self- driving cars is the opposite of running a video game. When you’re playing a video game, graphics cards take artificial objects and paint them into a visual scene. But this company figured out that if you can do this in a believable way in a game environment in real time, you can probably also do this in the real world... with real cars. This is the springboard for all the self- driving cars you’ll see in the coming years . In a self-driving car, this company’s chips take real objects and paint them into a “game.” They use what they have learned in games to follow real streets and track real pedestrians... WHY SELF-DRIVING CARS WORK LIKE VIDEO GAMES Industry lawyers like to call developments in the field of self-driving cars “advanced driver- assistance technologies” to avoid liability for life-or-death decisions. For example, “driver assistance” technology that applies the brakes or pulls you back into your lane is much easier to defend than technology that leaps curbs to avoid a head- on collision – but which in turn crashes the car into a school bus stop. The key will be in absolving carmakers from liability. That’s when we will see truly driverless cars. Most pundits think that this is still five to 10 years out.
Nvidia's latest technology is going a step further. We believe its technology will become the future of the Internet and mobility.
Self-driving cars aren’t good enough yet, largely because of weather and unexpected conditions that really can’t be programmed for: like a truck losing its load or a tree falling across a road. Driving on a bright, sunny day is easier than when it’s icy with blowing snow. Driving conditions deteriorate and create more risk, with no one willing to take the blame. Fortunately, one company is tackling the first steps to solve these problems... We’re talking about California-based Nvidia (NVDA), a technology titan. The trick to Nvidia’s strategy is that it’s like playing a video game in reverse. Instead of creating game-world objects rendered for the player’s point of view, Nvidia is tracking real- world objects to predict their motion from the perspective of a driver’s moving car. Imagine that you’re tracking a semitrailer... Odds are that it weighs between eight and 28 tons and has good tire tread. So in the next five seconds, it can go five miles per hour faster if it steps on the accelerator... or 30 miles per hour slower if the driver mashes the brakes.
40 | September 2017
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