Why Carmakers Can’t Transition to Newer Chips
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Why Carmakers Can’t Transition to Newer Chips
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Re: Why Carmakers Can’t Transition to Newer Chips
#2When a Power PC is perfectly capable for a MARS rover missions, I dont see any reason why they must run Snapdragons.
Unless some evil company, starts ditching physical controls or starts shoving Ads into Speedometer.
And everyone follows.
Im thankful that automobile tech didn’t discover electron yet. Imagine your speedometer consuming 200mb of ram.
Re: Why Carmakers Can’t Transition to Newer Chips
#3When a Power PC is perfectly capable for a MARS rover missions, I dont see any reason why they must run Snapdragons. Unless some evil company, starts ditching physical controls or starts shoving Ads into Speedometer. And everyone follows. Im thankful that automobile tech didn’t discover electron yet. Imagine your speedometer consuming 200mb of ram.
Don't give them ideas!
Re: Why Carmakers Can’t Transition to Newer Chips
#4https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28709481
> The aspect of the problem not talked about is that a lot of automotive chips are really, really old.
> And they are old, because of many certification requirements set partially by the industry, and a few odd governments.
> In reality, most of them are both less reliable, and harder to work with in comparison to open market parts.
> The only two things I seen chips with micron scale nodes used in my life were: air conditioner boards, and car parts.
For example, who in the world today makes PMOS TTL chips? I bet the few foundries who can still do that will bill car parts makers an arm, and a leg for keeping making something this old
Want to migrate? Find somebody who can can translate hand-drawn TTL chip to moderately modern CMOS under 60 years old.
At times, the cases about I heard of car makers were having troubles with were also nothing less of direct consequence of conscious overengineering: some BWMs have one STM32 per window switch just to blink the LED, and do ADC despite the switch having just 5 positions. And now they can't ship because of this single LED blinker.
Re: Why Carmakers Can’t Transition to Newer Chips
#5This feels like lack of planning. The semiconductor industry was a known entity for many years before this level of integration came to vehicles. They should have known this would happen.
Ultimately the industry will have to maintain their own production for consistent silicon.
Re: Why Carmakers Can’t Transition to Newer Chips
#6I look forward to the cyber-punkish future (real soon now?) where there's an old beige computer case with a Pentium MMX sticker on it on someone's passenger seat with wires snaking into the engine bay. "Yeah the ECU died, so I had to hack together this replacement...".
Re: Why Carmakers Can’t Transition to Newer Chips
#7> “We were able to substitute alternative chips, and then write the firmware in a matter of weeks,” Musk said. “It’s not just a matter of swapping out a chip; you also have to rewrite the software.”
https://www.theverge.com/2021/7/26/22595060/tesla-chip-short...
Re: Why Carmakers Can’t Transition to Newer Chips
#8When a Power PC is perfectly capable for a MARS rover missions, I dont see any reason why they must run Snapdragons. Unless some evil company, starts ditching physical controls or starts shoving Ads into Speedometer. And everyone follows. Im thankful that automobile tech didn’t discover electron yet. Imagine your speedometer consuming 200mb of ram.
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Re: Why Carmakers Can’t Transition to Newer Chips
#9When a Power PC is perfectly capable for a MARS rover missions, I dont see any reason why they must run Snapdragons. Unless some evil company, starts ditching physical controls or starts shoving Ads into Speedometer. And everyone follows. Im thankful that automobile tech didn’t discover electron yet. Imagine your speedometer consuming 200mb of ram.
Don't give them ideas!
Re: Why Carmakers Can’t Transition to Newer Chips
#10I look forward to the cyber-punkish future (real soon now?) where there's an old beige computer case with a Pentium MMX sticker on it on someone's passenger seat with wires snaking into the engine bay. "Yeah the ECU died, so I had to hack together this replacement...".
There are cars where the enthusiast scene burns their own ECU EEPROMS to compensate air:fuel calculations after installing larger injectors, better flowing intakes, etc.
Edit: There's also some "universal ECUs" from companies like Haltech. They sell a single ECU plus some adapter cables to make that single ECU run on a broad variety of cars from the 90's.
Possible since the 90's cars all have the same rough types/numbers of sensors. Switchable software does the rest. I imagine this doesn't work past some year of make as the cars got more complex.