From Bloomberg, August 23:
Alphabet Inc.’s Waymo has built a custom chip that the company said will improve the performance of its robotaxis, while also diversifying its chip supply beyond third-party companies such as Nvidia Corp.
The ASIC chip — short for application-specific integrated circuit — is in production in Waymo’s latest robotaxi generation, the company said Thursday. Waymo said using its own chip, alongside others and with sensors the company designed itself, will improve its robotaxis’ reflexes and navigational skills in complex urban environments.
Waymo has historically relied on products from companies including Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices Inc., integrating them into computers of its own design. With a specialized chip, Waymo said it can now more quickly process sensor data and run AI models that help robotaxis understand and respond to surroundings.
The move marks a shift toward more purpose-built robotaxis that Waymo said may reduce costs while offering roomier, more accessible spaces for riders. It also coincides with Alphabet’s Google orchestrating a broader effort to develop custom chips and control the soaring costs of AI computing infrastructure.
Waymo is the clear US robotaxi leader, offering more rides in cities including San Francisco, Phoenix and Atlanta than rivals like Tesla Inc. and Amazon.com Inc.’s Zoox. Its fleet has largely relied on Jaguar vehicles retrofitted with autonomous-driving technology and chips from others. But it recently launched a robotaxi with Zeekr, an arm of China-based automaker Geely Automobile Holdings, that is now being equipped with the new custom chip....
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Related:
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Nvidia Wants to Be the Brains Of Your Autonomous Car (NVDA)
NVIDIA Partner Tesla Reportedly Developing Chip With AMD (TSLA; NVDA; AMD)
Today in leveraged WTFs....
The only reason for Tesla to do this is that NVIDIA's chips are general purpose whereas specialized chips are making inroads in stuff like crypto mining (ASICs), Google's Tensor Processing Units (TPUs) for machine learning and Facebook's hardware efforts.
August 17, 2018
"Nvidia CEO is 'more than happy to help' if Tesla's A.I. chip doesn't pan out" (NVDA; TSLA)
Aug 18, 2018
Ahead of NVIDIA Earnings: The Last of the "Easy" Comparisons (NVDA)
Beating that Q3 2017 EPS, 90 cents, by double i.e. $1.80 or more, is doable but AI and data centers will have to pick up the slack from the Q1 and Q2 cryptocurrency bump that started declining with Bitmain and other miners use of ASICs rather than GPU's.
Going forward the trend toward specialist proprietary chips, see Tesla's development of their own chips etc, etc will leave NVIDIA with a couple holes in the potential addressable markets they will want to fill.
Additionally, the smaller pups, some still in stealth, are nipping at the big dog's heels, making it more expensive for NVIDIA to maintain their edge in architecture....
December 12, 2018
A Dip Into Chips: "AI Chip Architectures Race To The Edge"
We'll be referring back to this piece, it's the next big thing.
Jan. 24, 2019
Watch Out Nvidia, Xilinx Is Performing (reports, beats, pops) XLNX; NVDA
Xilinx with their field-programmable gate array approach versus Nvidia's more generalist chips is an example of the type of competition experts were predicting NVDA would be facing, some over two years ago, links after the jump...June 5, 2019
Chips: NVIDIA Begins To Embrace the Move Toward More Specialized Chips (NVDA; INTC; AMD; GOOG; XLNX)
See I told you I wasn't crazy. Something we've been babbling about for a couple years.
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Crypto Mining Market Pullback Hits Nvidia, Others (NVDA)
Just to pound the message home, the high-end miners switched to ASICS years ago.
That said, this is a nice overview of what's been going on with GPU's.
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Nvidia Is Developing A Custom Chip Design Unit To Address $30 Billion Niche (NVDA)
Yes,
a big niche but still a niche. Nvidia really, really wanted to own
ARM's design capability but when the regulators said 'ummm no', Mr.
Huang didn't stop trying to address the fact that Google, Microsoft,
Amazon Tesla and Facebook are all producing their own data center
chips....
January 16, 2025
Chips: "How Big A Threat Are Custom AI Chips To Nvidia Stock?" (NVDA; AVGO)
November 17, 2025
"Tesla teases new AI5 chip that will revolutionize self-driving" (TSLA)
"Terafab could become the largest factory on the planet—or Elon Musk’s biggest failure" (SPCX; TSLA)
And many more. 2015 to last week. What a long strange trip.
