Tier IV is on a mission to develop open source Level 4 autonomous software for self-driving vehicles. To accelerate the process, they’re putting Thelio Astra, System76’s new arm64 workstation, to the test.

The auto industry uses arm64 as the standard processing platform for autonomous vehicles. With the prevalence of x86 processors (ex. Intel & AMD), there are few options out there for a high performance Arm-based central computer. Often, automotive workstations use desktop-based compute systems with different varying compute parity that can lead to increased development and test cycles. And, despite already testing their software in active prototypes on the streets of Japan, Tier IV still has quite a bit of work ahead of them to achieve safe Level 4 autonomy.

This is where Thelio Astra comes into play. Tier IV brought in Thelio Astra as a means of consolidating compute resources in their self-driving development. Currently, they use various combinations of Intel Xeon, NVIDIA GPU, and NVIDIA Jetson/AGX platforms. Communication between these devices creates a performance bottleneck as the data navigates through available bandwidth. Access to proven datacenter power performance of Ampere’s manycore Arm processors removes the need for traditional zonal ECUs, reduces system complexity, increases development productivity, and simplifies deployment to the in-vehicle edge.

Thelio Astra is a workstation built for data center and and autonomous driving-grade performance workloads built on Ampere’s Arm manycore architecture, with Linux and cloud-native containers in an upgradeable tower for rapid prototyping—where performance-per-watt is key. Tier IV is looking into Thelio Astra as a solution that can do it all, whether simulating driving scenarios or training machine learning models, while reducing bottlenecks and streamlining the path to deployment as they build upon the work they showcased at ADAS & Autonomous Vehicle Tech Expo 2024.

Evaluating the Thelio Astra is Vikas, who first used System76 2018 Galago Pros as the Graduate Robotics program official laptop. Now a Systems Engineer at Tier IV, he was thrilled to learn about the Thelio Astra and how it could help his company. “Having a relationship with your vendors at a design level, from concept through production, is huge.” System76 being a mid-size manufacturer, we can take feedback about the machine and what could help Tier IV’s development further, and then quickly integrate those techniques into our manufacturing process to fulfill their needs.

Tier IV is headquartered in Japan, with backing from Isuzu, Mitsubishi, Suzuki and more to assist them with their Level 4 Autonomous Vehicle solutions. Learn more about their mission on their website.