8. They drive cool cars
Self-driving cars, also known as autonomous vehicles, have been touted as the future mode of transportation. But before they can be deployed, their safety on roads must be rigorously tested. Just think of how a human driver needs to react appropriately to other vehicles, pedestrians, traffic lights and weather conditions. An autonomous car must be able to do the same, with sensors as its ‘eyes’ and a powerful processor for its ‘brain.’
Recently, NVIDIA, a company better known for its high performance graphics cards, has collaborated with the automotive industry to provide a supercomputer small enough to fit under the bonnet. The Drive PX2 is that supercomputer, packing the computing prowess of 150 MacBook Pros with the capacity to perform 24 trillion operations per second into the size of a lunchbox.