In-House Chips, Lidar and an AI Helper That Handles Diagnostics

At its first Autonomy & AI Day celebration, Rivian announced some big updates to its onboard processing and sensing hardware to improve autonomy capabilities, as well as the addition of an AI-based voice assistant and AI-backed diagnostics. This jam-packed event is certainly true to its name.

In-house chips

Key ingredient No. 1 is custom silicon. The first-generation Rivian Autonomy Processor (RAP1) chip powers the third iteration of the company’s Autonomy Compute Module (ACM3). The architectural updates are aimed at eventually unlocking Level 4 autonomy, which means hands-off and eyes-off operation.

Nerdy ACM3 details: 5-nanometer processing, 1,600 trillion operations per second, integrates processing and memory into one module, uses an in-house developed AI compiler and platform software. The system can handle 5 billion pixels per second and features RivLink, a proprietary low-latency interconnect that allows multiple chips to combine forces for increased processing power.