Alphabet’s Waymo Unveils Custom Silicon to Power Its Next-Gen Robotaxis
Waymo reveals custom 5nm AI chips built to process sensor data inside its robotaxis as the company scales its autonomous driving fleet. The post Alphabet’s Waymo Unveils Custom Silicon to Power Its Next-Gen Robotaxis appeared first on TechRepublic .
Waymo, Alphabet Inc.'s autonomous driving unit, has unveiled custom 5nm AI chips to enhance the performance of its robotaxis. The application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC), manufactured using Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.'s 5-nanometer process, is designed to process raw sensor data onboard and reduce processing time to milliseconds.
The chips deliver over 1,000 trillion operations per second (TOPS) of machine-learning compute, focusing on edge ingestion layer for signal cleaning, denoising, and sensor fusion. Waymo's custom silicon adopts a hybrid computing architecture, pairing ML technologies with CPUs, GPUs, and accelerators to manage critical non-ML tasks like orchestration, data movement, and logging.
The onboard computing system prioritizes responsiveness, ruggedness, and redundancy, ensuring safe and efficient operations. With Waymo expanding its robotaxi services in cities like Phoenix, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, the custom silicon becomes crucial for improving efficiency and reliability at scale.
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