Toyota, GM, NVIDIA and others team up on self-driving car chips

Autonomous vehicles pose a whole bunch of R&D challenges. With so many aspects to consider -- power consumption, safety, user interface and data management, to name just a few -- creating a common computing platform for their use is a big ask of just one company. That's why a group of automotive and tech businesses have joined forces to create the Autonomous Vehicle Computing Consortium (AVCC), in a bid to create a platform that will promote the scalable deployment of automated and autonomous vehicles.

The consortium includes ARM, Bosch, Continental, DENSO, General Motors, NVIDIA, NXP Semiconductors and Toyota (whose P4 Automated Driving Test Vehicle is pictured above), who will collaborate on overcoming some of the most significant challenges posed by autonomous vehicles -- the group's first step will be developing a set of recommendations for a system architecture for the computing platform. According to Alex Harrod of Arm, "The group brings together a unique combination of expertise and a shared goal," and will be welcoming input from other interested parties and members of the automotive ecosystem.