Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 238 posts

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

#201

Post by Symmetry »

ethbro wrote: post #15
DmenshunlAnlsis wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just wait until they admit that they need LIDAR too... Cha Ching! Various Autopilot accidents strongly imply that whatever the computer “brain” is doing doesn’t matter if it doesn’t have sufficient “eyes” to actually see things like a fire truck, cop car, or bollard.

And yet squishy meatbags manage to sensor fuse a stereoscopic image (plus nascient sound based imaging) into a reliably rendered picture of the world...

That squishing grey thing in your skull is pulling something in the vicinity of a petaflop of computation in a 10 watt thermal budget. Biological nanotech is a hull of a drug!

https://hips.seas.harvard.edu/blog/2013/01/30/what-is-the-co...

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

#202

Post by Symmetry »

Retric wrote: post #34
DmenshunlAnlsis wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That number always comes up, and it always needs to be said that a billion miles with driver assist and a billion miles under autopilot are not the same, and it’s a bogus figure. As to better than a human, it needs to be better than the humans who buy luxury sedans, sober, and awake. Better than a random selection of humans in a random selection of cars is no good. Conflating all vehicle deaths is like conflating all…

> sober, and awake See you can try to move the goal post, but as soon as they would be saving lives by taking tired or drunk drivers off the road that's very useful.

As a matter of practical politics, that actually seems to be what the goalposts are. It might be better if things were different but in practice that's the standard a self driving car is going to need to meet to be accepted and allowed on the road.

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

#203

Post by twtw »

tokipin wrote: post #199
Fricken wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Tesla autopilot needs all the short term crutches it can get.

Supposed to be fully autonomous since, what, 18 months ago? How about that SF->NY demo?

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

#204

Post by tokipin »

nikofeyn wrote: post #39

what does he mean with regards to GPUs and CPUs "emulating"? they are computation machines doing computations. an algorithm running on one or the other isn't emulating anything in this context. running on "bare metal" is just an optimization along a certain axis. it isn't any more real of a computation. and talking about this now seems like another desperate attempt at generating hype.

As a naive example, if in a CPU you are doing some specific 3-step algorithm which would normally require 3 clock cycles, you can instead bake that algorithm into a circuit along with the memory it needs that will run in 1 cycle. In Elon's terminology, the CPU has to "emulate" what the baked-in circuit simply is.

But from the sounds of it this chip goes beyond that. It sounds like some kind of RAM/GPU hybrid with matrix-specific instructions specifically targeting NN inference for Tesla's specific style of NNs, which as a first guess I take to mean "lots and lots of layers."

In the call they mentioned increasing their investment in the chip team and technology, which is a sign that they're confident it's going to pay off.

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

#205

Post by ckastner »

modeless wrote: post #141
dev_dull wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are the model 3 hardware modular? For example, is it possible they’ll have you bring it to the dealer in a few years and get outfitted with these new chips?

Yes, Musk said that on the earnings call. But the hardware upgrade is not the hard part of self driving. At least they have stopped claiming that their current hardware is powerful enough for full self driving already, which was a ridiculous and worrying position for them to take.

> At least they have stopped claiming that their current hardware is powerful enough for full self driving already

The Autopilot page [1] still states the following:

"All Tesla vehicles produced in our factory, including Model 3, have the hardware needed for full self-driving capability at a safety level substantially greater than that of a human driver."

[1] https://www.tesla.com/autopilot

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

#206

Post by Fricken »

tokipin wrote: post #199
Fricken wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

He can say whatever he likes, the proof is in the pudding.

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

#207

Post by mnl »

xedeon wrote: post #135
DmenshunlAnlsis wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just wait until they admit that they need LIDAR too... Cha Ching! Various Autopilot accidents strongly imply that whatever the computer “brain” is doing doesn’t matter if it doesn’t have sufficient “eyes” to actually see things like a fire truck, cop car, or bollard.

Again with the LIDAR argument... Humans drive using only eyes (computer vision) and having a sense of location (localization/3D maps). Early autonomous test vehicles used LIDARS because camera and compute tech are not at the same level they are today. It's a legacy system and more of a shortcut. In essence, Object recognition > LIDAR judging distances. Yeah it's true that a vision based system is much harder to solve…

Humans have general intelligence, that's why they recognize lane dividers and can tell where a truck ends, we kind of expect such things. Also why inebriated people can drive somehow (of course they shouldn't but I'm making a point).

Maybe driving on the roads we have now with computer vision alone needs strong AI, maybe simpler standardized roads and vehicles are needed, who knows. I think that strong statements about this should be backed by evidence, not gut feeling. And I'd like to see that evidence coming from the company that promises their customers their cars have all the hardware they need.

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

#208

Post by ricw »

throwaway648 wrote: post #163
tomp wrote: 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…

That is until it rains and LIDAR falls flat on its face. LIDAR Is Great for training in perfect rainless conditions. For everything else we’ll have to use other tech, very likely camera based. Which is what tesla is doing.

Whether this will succeed is another question.

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

#209

Post by [deleted] »

dragonwriter wrote: post #185
modeless wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, Musk said that on the earnings call. But the hardware upgrade is not the hard part of self driving. At least they have stopped claiming that their current hardware is powerful enough for full self driving already, which was a ridiculous and worrying position for them to take.

> ridiculous and worrying I think “fraudulent” would be more accurate; it was factually false, it was at best entirely unfounded if not actually knowingly false, it was material to decisions of people to purchase the self-driving add-on.

[deleted]

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

#210

Post by [deleted] »

Fricken wrote: post #206
tokipin wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

He can say whatever he likes, the proof is in the pudding.

[deleted]
Post reply on HN