Hyundai announces its own OS for Nvidia-powered smart-ish cars

Will come as standard from 2022, but other auto-makers have worked on the same kit and code so could catch up fast

Hyundai Motor Group has announced an extensive collaboration with Nvidia that will see the GPU-slinger’s DRIVE platform pull up inside around seven million vehicles each year starting in 2022. But the team-up won’t be hard for rivals in both the car and silicon market to replicate.

The deal will see all Hyundai, Kia and Genesis models packing Nvidia-powered “infotainment units”. Even the most modestly-specced models will have the hardware installed. They’ll all run a new “connected car operating system” (ccOS) that Hyundai says it developed in house and which will “bring together the large amount of data generated by the vehicle and its network of sensors, as well as external connected car data centers, providing a more pleasurable and convenient experience for the driver and occupants.”

Hyundai says ccOS “incorporates an integrated architecture for a new ‘connected car service platform’ (ccSP). ccSP is an open platform enabling a wide range of partners to provide relevant services to owners.”

Just what those relevant services are was not revealed, but Nvidia said the deal is all about “software-defined and constantly updateable vehicles”.

The company also talked up the DRIVE platform’s ability to consolidate cars’ different functions in a single compute platform, and therefore to share data that can enhance safety.

“By running on Nvidia Drive, the in-vehicle infotainment system can process the myriad vehicle data in parallel to deliver features instantaneously,” Nvidia gushed in a blog post. “It can provide these services regardless of whether the vehicle is connected to the internet, customizing to each user safely and securely for the ultimate level of convenience.”

During development ccOS was said to be based on Genivi project that aims to develop a Linux-based car infotainment system. Nvidia and Hyundai are both participants in Genivi, so while the two companies have made much of their collaboration they may not have been entirely original and won’t be entirely alone. Indeed, BMW, Honda, Daimler, Nissan, Arm, Analog devices and others are also Genivi players. ®