NVIDIA announced earlier this week that it was collaborating with Hon Hai Technology Group or Foxconn, the largest manufacturer of iPhones, to build artificial intelligence (AI) factories in the coming years.
A press release said this new class of data centers, dubbed AI factories, will use NVIDIA's chips and software to enable Taiwan's Foxconn to better utilize AI in powering up a wide range of applications. America's NVIDIA is reportedly the biggest chipmaker in the world.
According to Interesting Engineering, these data centers will power various applications, which include the digitalization of manufacturing and inspection workflows, the development of AI-powered electric vehicles (EVs) and industrial robots, and language-based generative AI services.
"NVIDIA and Foxconn are building these factories together. We will be helping the whole industry move much faster into the new AI era," Foxconn Chairman and CEO Young Liu said in the press release.
"A new type of manufacturing has emerged - the production of intelligence. And the data centers that produce it are AI factories... Foxconn, the world's largest manufacturer, has the expertise and scale to build AI factories globally. We are delighted to expand our decade-long partnership with Foxconn to accelerate the AI industrial revolution," he added.
(Photo by SAM YEH/AFP via Getty Images))
The Foxconn logo is displayed on a Foxconn building in Taipei on January 31, 2019.
Foxconn and NVIDIA's Self-Learning and Self-Driving Cars
According to BBC, the announcement was made at Foxconn's annual tech showcase in Taipei on Wednesday.
The partnership will reportedly allow Foxconn to develop its autonomous automotive fleets, robotic systems, and smart cities based on NVIDIA technologies. The future plans are listed below:
- Foxconn Smart EV will be built on Nvidia Drive Hyperion 9, a next-generation platform for autonomous automotive fleets, powered by Nvidia Drive Thor, its future automotive systems-on-a-chip.
- Foxconn Smart Manufacturing robotic systems will be built on the Nvidia Isaac autonomous mobile robot platform.
- Foxconn Smart City will incorporate the Nvidia Metropolis intelligent video analytics platform.
According to CNN, Foxconn and NVIDIA noted that large computing systems powered by advanced chips would allow them to develop software platforms for the next generation of EVs by learning from everyday interactions.
Focus Taiwan reported that NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang explained that the AI factory will take raw data, process it, and produce intelligence for the EVs.
Huang noted that the EVs will collect data for the AI factory to process and further improve the software for the entire fleet of vehicles to work more intelligently. According to Huang, the EVs will have "AI brains" that will enable them to engage with drivers and passengers and drive autonomously.
Huang said: "Just as an EV has an AI brain, the factory also has an AI brain that is powered by NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD," an AI data center infrastructure. He noted that an AI factory will have many of these superpods.
"As a contract manufacturer, Foxconn will offer highly automated and autonomous, AI-rich EVs featuring the upcoming NVIDIA DRIVE Hyperion 9 platform, which includes DRIVE Thor and a state-of-the-art sensor architecture," the press release said.
"This will enable Foxconn and its automotive customers to realize a new era of functionally safe and secure software-defined cars," it added.
NVIDIA and Foxconn in the Electronic Car Industry
NVIDIA has long been a large player in the car industry. Its collaborations far exceed, with Foxconn, Volvo Cars and Zoox among these firms that have utilized NVIDIA technologies to power their next-generation AI-based autonomous cars.
Other than these automotive giants, automotive startups and EV manufacturers like SAIC and VinFast have also revealed their ambitions to construct software-defined vehicles utilizing NVIDIA technology in the past years.
Last January, Foxconn and NVIDIA announced a partnership to create autonomous vehicle platforms, in which Foxconn would produce electronic control units for cars based on NVIDIA's chips.
According to reports, Foxconn hoped to build 5% of electric cars worldwide by 2025 and to eventually produce up to 40% to 45% of EVs.
