Baidu, Nvidia Team Up on AI Platform for Self-Driving Cars

China’s Baidu Inc. and chipmaker Nvidia Corp. have formed a partnership under which they will use artificial intelligence to develop a cloud-based operating platform for self-driving cars. The deal was announced earlier today at the Baidu World Conference in Beijing.

The partnership combines Baidu’s cloud computing and mapping expertise with Nvidia’s Drive PX processor, which the company bills as the first in-vehicle artificial intelligence supercomputer. The new platform will be an open architecture that other companies can use to develop their own self-driving car systems, according to the partners.

Baidu plans to use the AI-based platform in future self-driving taxis in China. The company, which is often described as the Google of China, previously has said it plans to introduce autonomous vehicles in 10 Chinese cities by the end of the decade and begin mass production of such vehicles within five years.

Earlier this summer Baidu received approval to test self-driving cars in California. Baidu also invested $75 million last month in Velodyne Lidar Inc., which specializes in laser sensors used by self-driving cars to map their surroundings. Ford Motor Co. made a similar investment in Velodyne at the same time.

Nvidia says it is working with more than 80 carmakers and suppliers on self-driving vehicle systems. Its Drive PX 2 system can process 24 trillion operations per second, collecting and analyzing continuous streams of data from a variety of sensors.

Nvidia began working with Baidu in 2012 to develop a large-scale graphics processing unit. Baidu’s artificial intelligence development efforts are led by Andrew Ng, who previously headed the Google Brain AI project at Stanford University.