(By Balachander) NVIDIA Corp. (NASDAQ: NVDA), a maker of mobile chips, said it has received a five-year contract worth up to $20 million from the U.S. Defense Department's R&D arm to research embedded processor technologies.
The aim is to enable surveillance and computer vision systems in ground and airborne vehicles to collect and analyze vastly more data than can be processed in real time, NVIDIA said.
"This research will help NVIDIA continue to advance mobile computing for both government and consumer applications," said Steve Keckler, senior director of Architecture Research at NVIDIA.
The company said NVIDIA program - known as Project Osprey - will research low-power circuits and "extremely efficient" architectures and programming systems that enable 75 gigaflops per watt, using process technologies as advanced as 7 nanometer (nm) compared with today's 28-nm process.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) contract will fund research for processors that are 75-times more energy efficient than current embedded solutions, NVIDIA noted.
NVIDIA processors are used in embedded applications, including automobiles made by Audi, BMW, Tesla and Lamborghini, aircraft including the F-22 Raptor, and U.S. Army tanks.
The stock, which has been trading in the 52-week range of $11.15 to $16.90, dipped 0.04 percent to trade at $12.65 on Wednesday.