The key facts

  • Volvo will combine its safety systems with Nvidia's Hyperion architecture, the Alpamayo stack and the Halos layer
  • The goal is hands-free automated driving on city streets and highways
  • The first vehicle with the new stack will arrive "within the decade"; the deal value has not been disclosed

Expanded partnership

Volvo and Nvidia announced an expansion of a partnership that has lasted nearly ten years. Volvo will use three Nvidia components in future vehicles: the Hyperion sensor-computing architecture, the Alpamayo driving software stack and the Halos safety evaluation layer. The goal is an automated driving system capable of navigating city streets and highways.

How Alpamayo works

According to Ali Kani, head of Nvidia's automotive division, the Alpamayo stack is redundant and diverse: it combines a family of AI models, datasets, simulation and development tools with classic software using machine learning and perception from cameras and radars. "We run these two stacks simultaneously, and we have multimodal sensors — so the product is safer," Kani said. He added that the open source Alpamayo stack has already been downloaded by more than 650,000 developers.

First vehicle and scale of the deal

Volvo did not disclose the value of the partnership or the model that will be the first to receive the new Nvidia stack. Volvo's head of software development, Alwin Bakkenes, hinted at the scale of the deal and the company's evolution toward building a full technology stack for electric vehicles, plug-in hybrids and internal combustion engine vehicles. "In the past, automakers developed by model lines and worked with different suppliers, but we have completely changed and become a company with a full technology stack," he said. The first vehicle with the new stack will debut "within the decade," after which the technology may spread further.

Standardization on Hyperion

All of Volvo's battery electric vehicles already use the Nvidia Orin chip, which processes data from cameras, radars and other sensors. Bakkenes stated that in the future Volvo plans to standardize on Hyperion, including in terms of the sensor set, in order to expand the partnership with Nvidia.