NIO held its innovation technology day event NIO IN in Shanghai today and released a few major headlines. Here are five of the most important things we learned:
1. Shenji NX9031: World's first 5nm smart driving chip
At the event, chairman and founder Li Bin announced that the Shenji NX9031 chip has successfully "taped out", a term employed to indicate that the chip's design has been completed and progressed to the production phase.
The NX9031 was first revealed on December 23, 2023, at NIO Day 2023 for the upcoming executive flagship saloon NIO ET9.
The Shenji NX9031 has more than 50 billion transistors, which act as switches or amplifiers of electrical signals and are used to build logic gates in integrated circuits. For context, the NVIDIA Orin X, which NIO currently uses four of those on the existing NT 2.0 models, consists of 17 billion transistors.
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The new chip adopts a 32-core CPU architecture and has a built-in LRDDR5x 8,533 Mbps RAM, meaning it can transfer data at 8.5Gb per second.
The chip can process 6.5 billion pixels of image data per second (6.5 G Pixel/s) with a processing delay of less than 5 milliseconds, enabling industry-leading dynamic range and high-performance Image Signal Processor (ISP).
NIO demonstrated a real-life example of the AI noise reduction algorithm, comparing the NX9031 with a similar specification industry flagship chip, where the NIO in-vehicle ISP processing generated evident superior image clarity, especially in low-light environments.
The Shenji NX9031 is expected to replace the four Orin X chips with a total computing power of 1,016 TOPS.
2. SkyOS: World's first global operating system in the automotive industry
Alongside the new Shenji NX9031, NIO also released a new operating system called SkyOS, a new vehicle-wide OS that took 4 years of R&D and over 23,000 people to develop.
SkyOS effectively replaces AUTOSAR, a global standardized automotive software architecture, which eliminates the need for a separate underlying OS based on Linux. SkyOS can now achieve an end-to-end integration of all critical functions, resulting in superior performance and efficiency.
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This is similar to what Huawei did with its mobile HarmonyOS, replacing the Linux kernel with its self-developed architecture to achieve better performance and power efficiency.
SkyOS is designed with artificial intelligence in mind, offering 7 core features: high bandwidth, low latency, high computing power and heterogeneous hardware, cross-domain integration, flexible and continuous development, high reliability, and information security.
SkyOS connects components like smart hardware, computing platforms, and communication and energy management into a unified system. This enables seamless coordination of vehicle applications, such as connectivity, control, advanced driving functions, the digital dashboard, and smartphone apps.
3. Banyan 3.0: New smart in-car system
Banyan 3.0 version is set to deeply integrate the latest AI algorithms with the intelligent hardware, native framework, and cabin applications.
This new smart in-car system also introduced six new NOMI (voice-assistant) features, including parking assistant, guard summary, service butler, exploration and discovery, travel memories, and NOMI-DJ.
NOMI GPT will also be equipped with an "Emotion Engine" with 3 major new capabilities: situational, exclusive, and emotional intelligence. NOMI will better empathize and care for the users, creating an immersive digital experience.
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Other features that Banyan 3.0 is introducing include an improved intelligent rear comfort mode called "Rear Exclusive Mode" and enhanced audio experiences, such as the second-gen microphone-free karaoke feature.
4. NWM: China's first intelligent driving model
NIO released China's first intelligent driving model, coined as NWM for NIO World Model. NWM uses a multivariate autoregressive generative driving model, which features long-term deduction and decision-making capabilities.
For example, NVM can deduce 216 potential driving scenarios within 100 milliseconds, or a tenth of a second, to find the optimal driving decision. In comparison, the average human blink takes 300 to 400 milliseconds.
As a generative model, NVM can also create a 120-second video based on 3-second driving footage.
In generating "countless parallel worlds", NWM can find the optimal driving decision.
5. NIO Phone 2nd-gen powered by NOMI GPT
First launched in September 2023, NIO also introduced the second generation NIO Phone priced at CNY 6,499 - 7,499.
The 2nd-gen NIO Phone brought minimal changes to its aesthetics and focused on internal and software upgrades.
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For one, it features a 6.82-inch 2K quad-curve screen that technically achieved the world's deepest bending depth of 0.724 mm.
The NIO Phone is equipped with a triple camera layout, featuring a 48-megapixel main camera, 48MP ultra-wide angle, and a 50MP telephoto camera.
It also comes with the latest Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor and an optional maximum 16GB memory and 1T storage combination.
The NIO Phone features its in-house Android-based SkyUI, which has zero system ads and commercial pre-installations.