High-Performance Computing Chips Are Hard to Apply to Humanoid Robots

Wang Xingxing, CEO of Chinese Robotics Startup Unitree, Says High-Performance Computing Chips Remain Hard to Apply to Humanoid Robots

According to combined reports from Securities Times and Caixin, Wang Xingxing shared insights on topics such as the development stage of general-purpose robots and key technological pain points at Qualcomm’s 2025 Snapdragon Summit, held on Wednesday, September 24.

Wang stated that in terms of upstream hardware, ordinary high-performance computing chips are difficult to apply to robots. He gave an example: humanoid robots have limited physical space and battery capacity, which makes it impossible to accommodate high-performance computing chips. Graphics cards like NVIDIA’s RTX 4090, which consume as much as 200 to 300 watts of power, can drain a robot’s battery in just tens of minutes, while also causing issues with heat dissipation and noise.

Wang noted that in the future, the peak power consumption of computing chips deployed in robots should ideally be controlled within 100 watts, with average power consumption around 20 to 30 watts—similar to that of mobile phone chips.

He mentioned that in the first half of this year, humanoid robots have already been able to perform actions such as dancing, but staying only at this stage is insufficient. In the next phase, he hopes robots can execute any action: as long as a command is given, the robot can carry it out. This, he said, is what an "intelligent robot" should be like in people’s imagination.

When talking about longer-term upgrade plans, Wang expressed his hope that humanoid robots will be able to interact freely with the physical environment and complete tasks such as fetching a glass of water or cleaning a table. He estimated that this goal could be achieved by the end of next year or the year after.

Wang believes that at the current stage, embodied intelligence large models are still unable to be maturely applied, and the industry should maintain a more open attitude.

Unitree’s humanoid robots gained widespread fame in China after performing a dance at this year’s Spring Festival Gala. However, during a robot half-marathon event in April, a Unitree robot collapsed suddenly before even starting the race—triggering doubts that the company’s robots are only capable of performing shows and have limited practical application scenariOS.