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Tesla is building its own AI chips for self-driving cars

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Re: Tesla is building its own AI chips for self-driving cars

#191
As for how they’ll get the chips into existing Teslas, Elon says: “We made it easy to switch out the computer, and that’s all that needs to be done. You take out one computer, and plug in the next. All the connectors are compatible.”

I'll believe it when they successfully install it to the previous gen car. More often than not it turns out that some other hardware is incompatible with software improvements or has bugs and full system is not functional anyway without full upgrade.

Re: Tesla is building its own AI chips for self-driving cars

#192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So are you concerned about Tesla intentionally building killing instruments? Or potential for accidents? Or the potential for intentional misuse? The latter two. > We could drive down the number of morons by requiring astronaut training for vehicle operators but again, that tradeoff seems too harsh and it's more efficient to occasionally let people die in traffic accidents than letting them die because nobody quali…

>Much stronger and harsher enforcement of traffic laws. I'm sure that making the primary means of long (greater than walking) distance transportation for the majority of the population more expensive and higher stakes is going to work out great in the long term. I can see the parallels with healthcare. Creating yet another part of life where a single screw up that is capable of ruining the financial well being of som…

I'm not thinking about screwups, I'm thinking about reckless behaviour and endangering people. For example, treating speed limits as suggestions instead of hard constraints, overtaking in places where it's not allowed.

Re: Tesla is building its own AI chips for self-driving cars

#193
post #60
post #35

>By having its own silicone, Tesla can build for its own needs at its own pace. If they suddenly recognize something the hardware is lacking, they’re not waiting on someone else to build it. It’s by no means a trivial task — but if they can pull it off without breaking the bank (and Elon says it costs them “the same as the current hardware”), it could end up being a significant strength. I outright snorted at this. T…

>Tesla has it's own hardware platform. Anyone with an ounce of sense will know that was always going to happen because of power consumption, cost and performance ... so that they can create performance-intensive features that nobody else in the market yet has, because the off-the-shelf hardware won't allow it. Due to power consumption, cost and performance issues. And this custom hardware is being developed to solve…

We made it easy to switch out the computer, and that’s all that needs to be done. You take out one computer, and plug in the next.

Will existing Tesla owners be able to swap the computer? Or is the swap happening only inside the factory, to the next generation of the Teslas they're building?

This may be one way in which Tesla's approach differs from Apple's.

Re: Tesla is building its own AI chips for self-driving cars

#194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have also conflated silicon and silicone, which is humorous.

Blame the English language for making the name of 2 popular industrial materials with such similar names.

I don't know; it's not really surprising that a polymer has a name reflective of the metalloid that is the key element along with oxygen in its backbone chain.

Re: Tesla is building its own AI chips for self-driving cars

#195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Much stronger and harsher enforcement of traffic laws. I'm sure that making the primary means of long (greater than walking) distance transportation for the majority of the population more expensive and higher stakes is going to work out great in the long term. I can see the parallels with healthcare. Creating yet another part of life where a single screw up that is capable of ruining the financial well being of som…

I'm not thinking about screwups, I'm thinking about reckless behaviour and endangering people. For example, treating speed limits as suggestions instead of hard constraints, overtaking in places where it's not allowed.

>I'm not thinking about screwups, I'm thinking about reckless behaviour and endangering people

But who determines which is which? The letter of the law really, really, really sucks when it comes to traffic law. I haven't collected data but I'd wager that pretty much nobody follows the letter of the law for an entire drive from A to B

>For example, treating speed limits as suggestions instead of hard constraints

That's more human than reckless. Outside of places with Orwellian enforcement (I'm looking at you Europe with all your cameras) they really are. The vast majority of people go at a speed they feel comfortable in the conditions. This is why (conditions permitting) traffic flows at 80 even when the sign might say 55. People only follow the speed limit when they feel it's a comfortable speed. This is why the general recommendation is to set speed limits for the 90th percentile speed. If you don't do this on highways you get people doing the (inappropriately low) speed limit in the wrong lane. Passing on the right, tailgating and all the other things caused by traffic friction which is more stuff for drivers to keep tabs on and that decreases safety for all. There have been studies on this (Google "traffic friction" and filter out everything that has to do with literal friction). If anything speed limits on multi-lane roads should be raised to reflect the speeds people actually drive. I hope we'll see more dynamic speed limits in the future since they'll help a lot.

>overtaking in places where it's not allowed.

If every 100th instance of an illegal pass (usually on the shoulder when waiting for someone who's stopped to take a left turn or on the right on the highway) in my state resulted in a ticket it would probably be about a year before half the state's drivers hit the three strikes cutoff and had their licensees revoked.

The picture I'm trying to paint here is that aggressive enforcement of existing laws would probably be bad for the population at large because people break traffic laws in inconsequential ways all the time and that stronger enforcement of them would just screw people over (unless of course you enforce them so well that important people get screwed which would result in the laws changing) and discretion isn't an answer because that just results in profiling.

Re: Tesla is building its own AI chips for self-driving cars

#196
post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serious question- why is LIDAR so important? Obviously it’s possible to drive without it (humans do it), so it’s conceivable that eventually machines will be able to do it as well... So I’m guessing your point is, that won’t happen anytime soon and LIDAR is the fastest way to market; can you confirm/expand/clarify?

Estimating distances robustly is very important for navigation. LIDAR is accurate at relevant distances and most importantly very robust against environmental effects. Without LIDAR you can use stereoscopic vision (like human with two eyes) but that is very demanding, not that accurate, and very error prone. Sure, human can do it somewhat well, but eye and brain are extremely complex things to implement (and it still…

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Re: Tesla is building its own AI chips for self-driving cars

#197
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YES. Security compromise is the huge achilles heel of self-driving cars - and anything that is algorithmically controlled. When you have 100,000 self-driving cars on the road, and someone figures out how to hack them, and drive them simultaneously into crowds, that will be a BIG BIG problem. And this problem isn't just about self-driving cars. It is a fundamental issue with all algorithms. It's a lot harder to hack h…

Has a flight ever been brought down through a cyberattack? I've heard a lot of concern over that over the years, but (thank goodness) I don't recall any news of an actual flight being brought down.

Not in-flight as far as we know, but a Boeing 757 was hacked in a proof of concept attack on the tarmac quite recently

https://www.computing.co.uk/ctg/news/3020901/dhs-team-manage...

Re: Tesla is building its own AI chips for self-driving cars

#198
post #12

“Nvidia’s hardware was handling about 200 frames per second, its specialized chip is able to do crunch out 2000 frames per second “with full redundancy and failover”.” What are the real-world benefits going from 200 to 2000 frames a second? 200 seems quite fast.

Multiplexing different camera feeds perhaps? Could could do 200/fps split over 10 different camera feeds.

Re: Tesla is building its own AI chips for self-driving cars

#199
post #83
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard to say for sure they are no where near full autonomy in their research although their current vehicles crashing into barriers and fire trucks obviously don't cut it.

I'm only commenting on what little there is to glean about the compute, but there are so many other red flags about their autonomous development strategy. Crippling per-unit cost constraints, No Lidar, SLAM-lite, ANN heavy, insufficient redundancy and they've got a major data collection problem because they're relying on what they can get over the air. Plus Musk scared away most of their their top engineers.

Musk commented about LIDAR in a prior earnings call[1]. Tl;dr he believes that LIDAR is a short-term crutch that distracts from the real long-term challenge, which is the machine learning, not the sensors.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FaW85fIos64&t=21m40s

Re: Tesla is building its own AI chips for self-driving cars

#200
post #191

As for how they’ll get the chips into existing Teslas, Elon says: “We made it easy to switch out the computer, and that’s all that needs to be done. You take out one computer, and plug in the next. All the connectors are compatible.” I'll believe it when they successfully install it to the previous gen car. More often than not it turns out that some other hardware is incompatible with software improvements or has bug…

Really working or not, I'm just happy that an upgrade path crossed their minds. My car is 6 years old, and the console/nav looks so dated I wish they'd just put in dials.
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