Hitachi Rail becomes world’s first transportation firm to adopt new NVIDIA IGX Thor solution for real-time AI

Hitachi Rail announced today that it is to become the first transportation company in the world to include NVIDIA’s latest and most powerful platform - NVIDIA IGX Thor – in its AI-led digital asset management platform, HMAX.

The new IGX Thor platform will provide up to 8x higher AI compute and 2x better connectivity for Hitachi Rail’s HMAX products.

The world-leading industrial-grade system enables Hitachi Rail to offer customers enhanced, real-time edge AI processing for mission-critical applications – that are fundamental to the operational running and optimizing the performance of trains, signaling and infrastructure.

The integration of the NVIDIA IGX Thor platform in Hitachi Rail’s HMAX platform allows powerful real time processing of very large volumes of data at the ‘edge’ (on the trains or infrastructure). Without this edge capability it could take up to ten days for data to be processed in Hitachi Rail’s maintenance locations.

By using leading AI-based algorithms at the edge, the HMAX platform ensures only relevant information is sent back to the operational control centers. This improved capability enables an unprecedented improvement in the speed which actionable insights can be shared with transport operators, dramatically enhancing the potential for railway optimization and predictive maintenance.

The adoption of IGX Thor aligns with Hitachi’s broader programme to apply trusted AI and data technologies across the transport ecosystem. In September 2024, the company launched HMAX, a digital asset management suite for trains, signalling and infrastructure.

This latest initiative with NVIDIA builds on the Hitachi Group’s focus to harness the power of AI infrastructure through its Lumada 3.0 solutions.