RobtheFiend wrote:Audi and BMW also uses that layout.
Latest RS6 and the latest M5.
This is because (in the case of BMW at least) they need pulses from both banks to be plumbed to a twin-scroll turbocharger due to the firing order of a V8 engine. The only feasible way to do this without absurdly long exhaust runners is to reverse the direction of the heads and mount the pair of twin-scrolls in the valley of the V.
So it's actually got nothing to do with saving space at all - a more compact layout just happens to be the consequence of having to pipe specific cylinders to a given turbocharger.

As far as turbochargers actually inside the engine go, there is at least one modern F1 engine (I can't remember whose) where the compressor and turbine are on opposite ends of the engine block and the shaft goes through the middle, but turbo compound engines are another beast entirely which will never see the light of day in Automation.
The general gist of it is that a turbocharger is mechanically driven by the engine, just like a supercharger, but it retains the turbine which extracts power from the exhaust gases. The consequence is that there is no delay in power output, while at higher RPMs the exhaust turbine actually feeds power back into the engine. This idea was of some interest in fighter engines shortly after World War II but engineers discovered that in some cases the turbine would make more power than the reciprocating engine it was connected to and gave up on the idea.
Since you aren't allowed to run turbine engines in Formula 1 (and likely wouldn't want to, given their very sluggish responsiveness) this is basically the next best thing.