Power breakthrough, new Nvidia Xavier AI chips deliver an Exaflop for a megawatt
Nvidia is a chip company on the rise, their GPU's are increasingly underpinning most company's AI learning initiatives, and they're innovating aggressively.
Cite or link to this article
Griffin, M. (2017) 'Power breakthrough, new Nvidia Xavier AI chips deliver an Exaflop for a megawatt', 311 Institute, 5 July. Available at: https://www.311institute.com/power-breakthrough-new-nvidia-xavier-ai-chips-deliver-an-exaflop-for-a-megawatt/ (Accessed: 8 October 2026).
At the inaugural GPU Technology Conference Europe the other week Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang unveiled Xavier, Nvidia’s all new, all singing and dancing Artificial Intelligence (AI) “supercomputer” chip that’s been designed from the ground up to be the chip of choice for the next generation of self driving cars, and perhaps even Nvidia's own line of super energy efficient supercomputers - the first of which was debuted last year.
“This is the greatest SoC endeavour I have ever known, and we have been building chips for a very long time,” said Huang, Nvidia’s CEO, to the conference’s 1,600 attendees.
Packed with over 7 billion transistors, and manufactured using a cutting edge 16nm FinFET process, a single Xavier AI processor will be able to replace today’s Nvidia DRIVE PX 2, an open architecture AI chip, with a chip that has dual mobile SoCs and dual discrete GPUs, but at a fraction of the power consumption.
Xavier is a complete System on a Chip (SoC) and integrates a new GPU architecture called Volta, a custom 8 core CPU architecture, and a new computer vision accelerator, and when it’s released later this year it will deliver 20 Trillion operations per second (TOPS) of performance, while consuming only 20 watts of power.
Putting that into perspective, if you put 50,000 of these chips together, which is peanuts by most of today’s supercomputer standards, you’d have an Exascale supercomputer that, from a chip perspective anyway, would only draw one megawatt of power – and that’s a crazy, crazy low figure – especially when you consider that the next Exascale supercomputer, which is being drawn up by the Chinese and the US, is expected to draw over a Gigawatt of energy.
But that’s not all – no no no. Despite all the fanfare about its design, its speed and its sleek, good looks, as the want to be brain of a self driving car it’s also been designed to be compliant with critical automotive standards, such as the ISO 26262, which is a functional safety specification.
Is there anything more beautiful than a compliant chip? No – enough said, so now, having checked lots of boxes all that remains is for Nvidia to get their Xavier super hero, er, supercomputer, chip into the hands of the auto makers.
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Nvidia is a chip company on the rise, their GPU's are increasingly underpinning most company's AI learning initiatives, and they're innovating aggressively.
About the author
Matthew Griffin Founder, 311 Institute
Matthew Griffin is a multi-award winning Futurist and expert in Disruption and Innovation, Geopolitics, Leadership, and Technology, who NASA have described as a "walking encyclopaedia of the future" and a "futurist Polymath."
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Matthew Griffin is a multi-award winning Futurist and expert in Disruption and Innovation, Geopolitics, Leadership, and Technology, who NASA have described as a "walking encyclopaedia of the future" and a "futurist Polymath." 15-time best selling author of the "Codex of the Future" series, Matthew is the Founder and Futurist in Chief of the 311 Institute, a global Futures and Deep Futures advisory firm working with royal households, world leaders, G7, G20, and G77 governments, NGOs, and multi-national mid and mega cap firms to help them explore, shape, and lead the next 50 years of business and society.
An award-winning YouTube creator with over a million followers, with an unrivalled global reach and impact, Matthew is a highly sought-after international keynote speaker, lecturer, and mentor who collaborates with global leaders through the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC) and United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) to shape pivotal initiatives such as the UN’s AI for Humanity program, the United Nations Conference of the Parties (UN COP), and the World Economic Forum in Davos.
As the former Global Head of Cloud, National Security, and Enterprise Sales for companies including Atos, Dell-EMC, and IBM, Matthew has a proven track record of building multi-billion dollar business units and turning failing divisions into market leaders. His ability to identify, analyse, and communicate the implications of hundreds of emerging technologies and trends is unparalleled, and his insights are trusted by many of the world’s most respected organisations, including ABB, Accenture, Adidas, AON, ARM, BCG, Centrica, Citi, Coca-Cola, Dentons, Deloitte, Dow Jones, EY, Google, KPMG, Lego, Legal & General, LinkedIn, Microsoft, PepsiCo, Qualcomm, RWE, Samsung, Siemens AG and Siemens Energy, T-Mobile, UBS, VISA, Walmart, Workday, Worldpay and many others.
Regularly featured in the global media including the AP, BBC, Bloomberg, CNBC, Discovery, Forbes, Khaleej Times, Telegraph, TIME, ViacomCBS, WIRED, and the WSJ, Matthews mission is to help organisations create a fair and sustainable future whose benefits are shared by everyone irrespective of their ability, background, or circumstances.
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Sources and further reading
- Drive PX series en.wikipedia.org
- System on a Chip en.wikipedia.org
Source: first published by the 311 Institute on 5 July 2017. Cite as: Griffin, M. (2017). Power breakthrough, new Nvidia Xavier AI chips deliver an Exaflop for a megawatt. 311 Institute. https://www.311institute.com/power-breakthrough-new-nvidia-xavier-ai-chips-deliver-an-exaflop-for-a-megawatt/
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