Nvidia has used CES to stake its claim as the leading silicon powerhouse in the automotive sphere, with its GPU-based computational platform aiming to be the heart of autonomous vehicles. Not that it doesn’t have its share of hardware rivals, including Intel, and a lurking Qualcomm, Nvidia sees its new partnerships with Here, Audi, ZF, and Zenrin as stepping stones to auto dominance. Currently, the silicon wars seem to be lining up to be Intel with BMW versus Nvidia with Audi – although non-silicon-based competition from the likes of Google’s Waymo, Tesla, and Uber are very prominent. Sure, Qualcomm’s acquisition of NXP (a major force in the less complex chips used in vehicles) could position the company to take a…