For a couple of years Nvidia has been touting the potential for GPUs to power different autonomous machines such as AI-assisted robots and driverless cars, and today that vision took a step closer to reality at Computex 2018, currently underway until in Taipei until 9 June.

To that end the company's CEO Jensen Huang debuted its Isaac platform designed for robotics, as well the dev kit that will assist developers in the form of the Jetson Xavier. Huang also noted that it is the largest computing platform that the company has worked in years. "Its first phase will enable new levels of software automation that boost productivity in many industries. Next, AI, in combination with sensors and actuators, will be the brain of a new generation of autonomous machines," he added.

As for what the Jetson Xavier 'computer' will be providing AI and robotics developers, Nvidia says it combines a Volta Tensor GPU, octa-core ARM64 CPU, dual NVDLA deep learning accelerators and processors for image, vision and audio. Added to this is nine billion transistors which can handle up to 30 trillion operations per second and only requires 30 watts of power in order to function.

Dev kits for the Jetson Xavier are set to go on sale in August, with a recommended asking price of $1 299 (R16 320). It's unclear at this stage if South African developers will have access to the Jetson Xavier computer from the local Nvidia distributors.