At Audis press conference at CES 2012, Ricky Hudi, head of electrics/electronics development, announced that the Tegra 3 quad-core mobile processor which powers tablets and phones that are just hitting store shelves will be in next years Audi models.
Consumer-electronics products have a lightning-fast development cycle. But it generally takes years to get new technology into cars, due to a meticulous engineering process that requires many thousands of parts to be seamlessly integrated.
Audi stands for progressive luxury and our new aim is to adopt the benchmarks of consumer electronics, Hudi said. He called NVIDIA a strategic partner that is enabling this to happen.
Coming on stage as Audis only guest, NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang said that the secret behind the extraordinarily fast incorporation of NVIDIAs latest technology into Audi is NVIDIAs Visual Computing Module (VCM). The 33-inch automotive-grade board contains a Tegra processor, memory and I/O controller, as well as a connector, which enable it to be easily integrated into the vehicle.
Audi is the first car company in the world to keep up with consumer electronics, Huang said. Gesturing to the VCM being held by Hudi, he added, What youre seeing is the latest and greatest architecture from NVIDIA. Its truly unbelievable for a car company to move this fast.
Tegra 3s ultra-low power consumption is one of its key attractions to Audi because it translates to lower fuel consumption. Just as the processors fifth ninja core enables mobile devices to stay updated when theyre turned off, it will enable cars to sync data such as music, map destinations or weather forecastseven when the engines switched off.
Hudi called VCM a great example of the kind of collaboration that stems from the companies six-year extensive collaboration.