PUBLISHER: ResearchInChina | PRODUCT CODE: 2064026
PUBLISHER: ResearchInChina | PRODUCT CODE: 2064026
Embodied AI SoC Research: Chip Vendors Are Transforming from "Single SoC Vendors" to "Full-Stack Chip Platform Providers".
The advancing chip technology provides a crucial boost to the booming embodied artificial intelligence (EAI) industry. Robots for different application scenarios have differentiated chip selection requirements, avoiding problems caused by improper selection, such as excessive computing power surplus or insufficient performance. In addition, the development of the EAI industry also relies on breakthroughs in large model technology. The intelligence level of robots has been significantly improved, enabling robots to make independent judgments and perform complex tasks.
As the EAI Market Continues to Expand and Chip Performance Requirements Keeps Rising, Chip Vendors Launch Full-Stack Solutions.
The robot chip market is in a period of rapid growth. The global shipments of general-purpose EAI robots reached 13,000 units in 2025 and is expected to exceed 50,000 units in 2026. At present, major chip giants have launched SoCs for EAI, such as NVIDIA Jetson series and Qualcomm IQ10 series. Meanwhile, they provide robot development platforms, including NVIDIA Isaac open-source platform, second-generation Rockchip RKNN neural network model conversion and optimization tool, and Black Sesame SmartX multi-dimensional intelligent computing platform for the robot industry, in a bid to meet customers' needs for rapid application deployment and model development.
Currently, EAI SoCs are evolving:
Trend 1: Requirements for Chip Computing Power Become Much Higher.
NVIDIA's new Jetson T5000 adopts the Blackwell GPU architecture, delivering up to 2070 FP4 TFLOPS of AI compute, 7.5x higher than the previous-generation Jetson Orin. The RDK S100P from Horizon Robotics (D-Robotics) integrates CPU+BPU+MCU on a single chip, delivering 120 TOPS computing power. With the increasing complexity of algorithms, robots' computing power demand is gradually rising from the current 200-500 TOPS to 500-1000 TOPS. Notably, the industry no longer simply stacks computing power but shifts to "efficiency priority". Algorithm optimization makes efficiency a core indicator.
Trend 2: Chip Vendors Evolve towards Advanced Processes
Mainstream chip vendors move towards advanced processes. NVIDIA Jetson AGX Thor adopts 4nm process, Intel Core Ultra Series 3 uses Intel 18A process, Rockchip RK3588 adopts 8nm process, and MediaTek's latest Genio Pro adopts 3nm process, substantially boosting chip performance.
Trend 3: EAI Chip Vendors Are Transforming from "Single SoC Vendors" To "Full-Stack Chip Platform Providers".
In SemiDrive's case, besides EAI cerebrum SoCs, it has also launched intelligent control cerebellum SoCs and high-performance MCUs, so as to build full-stack EAI solutions, covering the complete architecture of "cerebrum - cerebellum - body- joint". Its product matrix ranges from main control cerebrum SoCs for high-level cognition and decision, and intelligent control cerebellum chips for motion coordination and real-time control, to E3-R series MCUs for LiDAR/machine vision, motion center, dexterous hands and joint modules, realizing full-chain chip coverage.
Among them, the intelligent control cerebellum D9-Max and robot joint module MCU E311x-R have come into mass production, and built in-depth cooperation with leading robot enterprises, successfully bringing automotive-grade high performance and high reliability into the robot field.
D9 Max adopts an architecture optimized for cerebellum application. Based on hardware isolation and hardware virtualization technology, it integrates one 8-core 2.0GHz Cortex-A55 CPU cluster, one 4-core 2.0GHz Cortex-A55 CPU cluster, and 3 pairs of dual-core lockstep 800MHz Cortex-R5F, as well as computing units like 8TOPS NPU and GPU. A single chip allows for deployment of three core functions of motion control system, HMI and EtherCAT master station, integrating the functions that traditional solutions require three chips to enable into a single chip.
The high-performance MCUs (E3-R series) have made substantial progress in joint control, meeting high functional safety and cybersecurity requirements and providing one-stop solutions. As the main control chip for joint modules, E311x-R features high real-time performance and highly stable computing power output capability. It adopts dual R5F cores with a main frequency up to 400MHz. In actual R&D, the dual cores separate motor control and communication processing for dedicated core allocation and enhanced performance.
In terms of EAI cerebrum SoC, SemiDrive reuses its expertise in on-device large model capabilities in the automotive sector to develop the next-generation robot cerebrum chip R1. Adopting ARM V9.2 architecture CPU and new high-performance NPU, it supports on-device deployment of embodied end-to-end models such as MLLM/VLA under low power consumption.
Trend 4: Chip Vendors Are Launching Full-stack Self-developed Toolchains.
Rockchip launched RKNN-Toolkit2, its second-generation neural network model conversion and optimization tool. Acting as a bridge connecting mainstream deep learning frameworks and Rockchip NPU (Neural Processing Unit) hardware platforms, it is designed to help developers efficiently deploy trained AI models on embedded devices. Based on Huashan A2000, Black Sesame Technologies builds the easy-to-use Shanhai AI toolchain, covering the entire process from model optimization to on-device deployment, providing developers with an efficient model development and deployment system. SemiDrive offers complete software and hardware development kits such as the D9-Max application development kit, enabling customers and independent developers to rapidly deploy applications and conduct on-device development.
Selection of Chips and Algorithms by Embodied Robot OEMs
The EAI level is essentially the result of the co-evolution of algorithms and chips. The two are interdependent and mutually driven, forming the core closed loop of robot intelligent systems.
For example, the basic computing board of AgiBot Lingxi X2 adopts two Rockchip RK3588 chips, replacing Jetson Xavier adopted by the previous-generation, offering improvements in both cost and performance. The 6TOPS NPU of RK3588 delivers excellent performance in motion control and perception fusion scenarios while reducing power consumption by 7W. The high-compute board adopts NVIDIA Jetson Orin NX, with total AI compute of 169 TOPS.
In terms of algorithms, the cerebrum of Lingxi X2 is equipped with AgiBot's self-developed large model Genie Operator-1 (GO-1). Adopting the Vision-Language-Latent-Action (ViLLA) architecture composed of VLM (multimodal large model) and mixture-of-experts (MoE), Lingxi X2 possesses superior learning, fast few-shot generalization and continuous evolution capabilities. The cerebellum of Lingxi X2 adopts the Xyber-Edge controller for robot motion coordination and decision. With a 144-core heterogeneous computing architecture, the controller dynamically allocates reasoning tasks to NPU clusters, and control commands to FPGAs, and compresses the traditional 12-layer control architecture for motion planning into a 3-layer implicit planning structure, achieving 450Hz real-time closed-loop control, greatly superior to Tesla Optimus' 280Hz closed-loop frequency.
AgiBot has made a differentiated and complementary layout by launching three product series of Yuanzheng, Lingxi and Genie, targeting industrial manufacturing, commercial services and data research scenarios, respectively, and is advancing towards mass production and commercial deployment.