Waymo puts a custom 1,000 TOPS chip into its robotaxis, loosening its Nvidia dependence
Waymo has put a custom application-specific chip into production in its latest robotaxi generation, delivering more than 1,000 trillion operations per second on TSMC's 5-nanometer process and handling camera, radar and lidar data before the driving software takes over. Waymo frames the part as additive to Nvidia and AMD rather than a replacement, but it lands on par with Nvidia's current autonomous driving systems and is aimed squarely at per-vehicle cost — the economics that decide whether robotaxi fleets scale. It ships in the Zeekr-built robotaxi.
Source: the-decoder.com ↗
The chip processes sensor data faster and runs the AI models that help its robotaxis understand and react to their surroundings.
Waymo
Why this matters
- → Custom silicon cuts per-vehicle cost — the make-or-break economics for robotaxi scale
- → Reduces dependence on Nvidia for autonomous driving workloads
- → 1,000+ TOPS on 5nm matches Nvidia's current AD systems
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