Ecarx, a Chinese auto tech startup backed by Geely’s chairman Li Shufu, on Wednesday unveiled its new seven-nanometer system-on-a-chip called AD1000, which can offer over 256 trillion operations per second (TOPS) of performance, and is being billed as comparable to Nvidia’s current chip called DRIVE Orin for autonomous driving. The company said vehicles powered by a computing platform with four AD1000 SoCs, could feature Level 4 autonomous capabilities, meaning they can travel from point A to point B without requiring any human intervention, according to definitions set by the Society of Automotive Engineers. Ecarx in 2021 released its first seven-nanometer chip, the SE1000, an alternative to Qualcomm’s flagship Snapdragon SA8155P that powers a vehicle’s infotainment system, and has shipped more than 230,000 chips, mostly to Lynk & Co, a joint brand owned by Geely and Volvo. [TechNode reporting, Ecarx release]