New Electronic System to Limit Car Accidents

An investigator takes photos of a crash scene along Commonwealth Avenue involving a fire truck and a car Monday in Boston's Back Bay neighborhood. AP PHOTO
An investigator takes photos of a crash scene along Commonwealth Avenue involving a fire truck and a car Monday in Boston's Back Bay neighborhood. AP PHOTO
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New Electronic System to Limit Car Accidents

An investigator takes photos of a crash scene along Commonwealth Avenue involving a fire truck and a car Monday in Boston's Back Bay neighborhood. AP PHOTO
An investigator takes photos of a crash scene along Commonwealth Avenue involving a fire truck and a car Monday in Boston's Back Bay neighborhood. AP PHOTO

LG, for home appliances and TVs, has come up with a new driver-assistance system to mitigate or prevent car crashes.

The CNET.com website pointed out that the advent of new technology in cars, from 4G-connected navigation to driver assist systems, is opening up new opportunities beyond traditional automotive equipment suppliers. While the LG brand has appeared on a wide array of consumer electronics, the Korean company is now branching into automotive with new innovations.

LG, along with partners NXP, a chipmaker, and Hella, an automotive camera specialist, came up with a new automotive vision platform designed to detect objects and hazards in the driving environment, potentially preventing collisions.

This new automotive vision platform relies on a camera mounted behind the windshield, near the rear view mirror. With its processor, it can identify cyclists and pedestrians and automatically hit the brakes.

The system can also read road signs, alerting drivers to stop signs and speed limits, and see lane lines, warning of vehicle drift.

Late in 2017, NXP and Hella announced what the companies called an "open vision platform for autonomous safe driving," with Hella supplying cameras and NXP supplying chips that could process the imagery. The addition of LG adds further image processing expertise.



AI Cloud Provider SMC Plans Global Rollout

People attend a media tour of Sustainable Metal Cloud's Sustainable AI Factory in Singapore July 25, 2024. REUTERS/Caroline Chia/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights
People attend a media tour of Sustainable Metal Cloud's Sustainable AI Factory in Singapore July 25, 2024. REUTERS/Caroline Chia/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights
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AI Cloud Provider SMC Plans Global Rollout

People attend a media tour of Sustainable Metal Cloud's Sustainable AI Factory in Singapore July 25, 2024. REUTERS/Caroline Chia/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights
People attend a media tour of Sustainable Metal Cloud's Sustainable AI Factory in Singapore July 25, 2024. REUTERS/Caroline Chia/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights

Singapore-headquartered AI cloud provider Sustainable Metal Cloud (SMC) is planning to expand globally as its sees fast-growing demand for its energy saving technology, its CEO said on Thursday.

"Due to client demand, we’re looking to expand in EMEA (Europe Middle East and Africa) and North America," CEO and co-founder Tim Rosenfield said, Reuters reported.

The startup, a partner of AI chip giant Nvidia, already operates what it calls "sustainable AI factories" in Australia and Singapore and is set to launch in India and Thailand.

Its clients in Singapore, where it operates over 1,200 of Nvidia's high-end H100 AI chips, include Facebook owner Meta who uses SMC's cloud to run its Llama 2 AI model.

While most data centres depend on air cooling technology, SMC uses immersion technology, submerging servers from Dell fitted with GPUs (graphics processing units) from Nvidia in a synthetic oil called polyalphaolefin to draw heat away faster.

The technology behind the approach reduces energy consumption by up to 50% compared to traditional air cooling, according to the CEO.

Demand for AI is expected to increase 10-fold compared with 2023, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).

The electricity consumption of data centres globally is expected to top 1,000 terawatt-hours in 2026, roughly equivalent to Japan's total annual consumption, the IEA said in March.

SMC is currently raising $400 million in equity and $550 million in debt according to a source with direct knowledge of the matter.

The company declined to comment. The fundraising was first reported by Bloomberg.