NVIDIA announced its recently developed platform Isaac for fueling the next generation of autonomous machines on June 3. It has also announced an agreement with MOST, the Ministry of Science and Technology of Taiwan, to advance the nation’s Artificial intelligence capabilities.
Isaac was launched by founder and CEO Jensen Huang at Computex 2018. It features new software, hardware, and a robot simulator for the virtual world.
Jetson Xavier is at the core of Isaac, and it is the first ever computer dedicated to robotics. It includes over 9 billion transistors to offer more than 30 TOPS (trillion operations per second) using the one-third energy of a lightbulb!
Three of the six high-end processors of Xavier’s handle imaging, visibility, and videography. Three others are Volta Tensor Core GPU, dual NVDLA deep learning accelerators, and an eight-core ARM64 CPU.
The robotics software of Isaac has a toolkit for simulation, training, verification, and deployment of Xavier. The toolkit includes the following:
- Isaac SDK is a set of APIs and tools.
- Isaac IMX, a series of Intelligent Machine Acceleration applications.
- Isaac Sim is a virtual simulation environment for developers.
Isaac can be used for autonomous machines to provide them with capabilities to work in areas like manufacturing, logistics, and services across various industries. The Jetson Xavier developer kit with the Isaac robotics software has a price range of $1,299. Early access will start in August via distributors worldwide.
Regarding NVIDIA’s collaboration with MOST, it extends for the coming 10 years for developing local deep learning and relevant AI techs. The joint force will cover five areas: supercomputing infrastructure, research, training, start-ups, and innovation.
The partnership is an extended arm of the ministry’s AI Grand Plan that was introduced in 2017. Premier Lai Ching-te of Taiwan enthusiastically said that this is essential for sharpening national competitiveness.
