NVIDIA Holoscan

Overview

NVIDIA Holoscan is a high-speed sensor bridge and streaming protocol that connects physical edge sensors (cameras, lidar, temperature sensors) directly to GPUs via GPU-Direct Ethernet, bypassing CPU memory copies for ultra-low-latency data ingestion. In the three-computer architecture reference design, Holoscan Sensor Bridge forms the critical link between the sensing edge (IGX nodes connected to robots and industrial equipment) and the GPU inference and simulation tiers, enabling real-time on-device processing for physical AI applications.

Holoscan is particularly important for physical AI use cases where humanoid robots and industrial cobots carry 6–8 cameras plus lidar and other sensors generating continuous high-bandwidth streams that must be processed with minimal latency for safe human-machine interaction.