Why Carmakers Can’t Transition to Newer Chips • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Carmakers Can’t Transition to Newer Chips

#281

Post by tantony » Sun, Oct 03, 2021, 1:30 AM UTC

heeen2 wrote: post #186

tantony wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If they were so passionate about spending money to make the safest cars, they'd be doing sensor fusion. That's your opinion. They have shown data where the information from radar was of a lower quality than what their vision stack was providing (e.g. lack of vertical resolution). Watch their AI day webcast for examples. Their current vision-only stack has been validated with LIDAR ground-truth data.

Is anyone arguing for replacing vision with lidar and radar instead of combining it?

If the radar data conflicts with what vision is saying, which one do they trust? They have shown that their vision stack has surpassed what they can do with radar. So "fusing" that data in only makes it worse when it gives conflicting information.

Re: Why Carmakers Can’t Transition to Newer Chips

#282

Post by boznz » Sun, Oct 03, 2021, 1:38 AM UTC

tuatoru wrote: post #229

perl4ever wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>All of those switches become much more expensive Wouldn't a more important question be how does the failure mode change ?

Above 30V - 50V DC, contact arcing becomes a huge problem. (It's a problem below that, but less huge.) With AC, the arc will self-extinguish a half-cycle after the switch opens. With DC there is no cycle, and contacts can be completely vaporised in tens of milliseconds. Commodity switching components are usually rated "30V DC, 250V AC" for this reason. It is possible to design switches so that even DC arcs self-extin…

if we are going to 48V then pretty sure all power switching would use solid state relays/MOSFETs, Any mechanical switch would just be the input to a micro at 5V or lower.

You could also just switch the HV (400V+) bus directly down to 48/60V as all the high current devices motor/ac/power steering etc run off the HV bus and you would just be left with lights, entertainment and servos on the low voltage side. The 12V battery is probably a bit silly when you have a 50KWH main battery and 97% switching conversion efficiency regulators and I am guessing it may disappear in the next 10 years

Re: Why Carmakers Can’t Transition to Newer Chips

#283

Post by blcArmadillo » Sun, Oct 03, 2021, 2:04 AM UTC

MichaelZuo wrote: post #227

hinkley wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The suppliers are running in pretty thin margins aren’t they? Did they really have any choice but to cancel those orders or potentially go bankrupt? If you sit on someone’s shoulders and forget that they’re doing most of the work, you can be shocked all you want when they collapse out from under you but nobody on the ground is going to have any sympathy at all for you. I’ve worked for software subcontractors and it’s…

‘ sweetheart deal loaded with scope creep not spelled out properly in the contracts’ That sounds more like a problem to take up with your lawyers?

If you don't allow for scope creep you won't get any contracts. What I've seen in the industry is most companies will under bid hoping to make it up in change request fees. The successful companies are the ones who manage the OEM such that they keep them happy while maximizing change requests. It's a fine line to walk.

Re: Why Carmakers Can’t Transition to Newer Chips

#284

Post by SV_BubbleTime » Sun, Oct 03, 2021, 2:11 AM UTC

shiftpgdn wrote: post #38

01100011 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I can tell, Tesla plays fast and loose, treating their product like a manufacturer of consumer electronics and not a manufacturer of a dangerous and durable good. That obviously allows them to out-compete other auto manufacturers who are more aware of things like product liability. See the Toyota accelerator-gate lawsuits. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009%E2%80%932011_Toyota_vehic... : > However, on…

Toyota accelerator-gate is largely a farce. Almost all of the people involved with Toyota unintended acceleration were over the age of 65 and had the poorly designed loose floor mats in their cars. Even if they had perfect readable John Carmack tier coding they still would have lost.

Not entirely a farce.

The PCM (engine controller) that a university audit got access to had 12,000 global variables. Their conclusion was it was not possible to prove either way.

There was a definitely real issue with floor mats getting the pedal stuck. I don’t know enough background on it past the audit that was done.

Re: Why Carmakers Can’t Transition to Newer Chips

#285

Post by vertere » Sun, Oct 03, 2021, 2:40 AM UTC

tablespoon wrote: post #247

alfiedotwtf wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you sit on someone’s shoulders and forget that they’re doing most of the work, you can be shocked all you want when they collapse out from under you but nobody on the ground is going to have any sympathy at all for you. Ajax Fasteners where a small manufacturer in the name of Division of Labour, and when they went into receivership, it took down Australia's entire car industry. Let me repeat - Australia no longe…

> Ajax Fasteners where a small manufacturer in the name of Division of Labour, and when they went into receivership, it took down Australia's entire car industry. Let me repeat - Australia no longer has a car industry. Holy crap: https://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2006/s1719988.htm You'd think the car companies could have just bought the manufacturing assets of the supplier if it was this critical (that's assu…

That was 2006. Australia had a car industry well after that. It died a slow death, I doubt you can blame it on one supplier.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automotive_industry_in_Austral...

Re: Why Carmakers Can’t Transition to Newer Chips

#286

Post by fiddlerwoaroof » Sun, Oct 03, 2021, 3:01 AM UTC

brianwawok wrote: post #209

oceanghost wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't personally understand how Tesla hasn't had more problems It's that nobody cares and the media doesn't cover it. A friend of mine-- his Tesla has broken down a dozen times and he still happily pre-ordered the cyber truck. My 10-year-old Honda has never had any work done to it other than maintenance-- but that doesnt make the news either.

And if we go for antidotes, my current Tesla has had 0 problems or recalls, my previous Honda had many many recalls and issues. This is not a useful way to look at a product.

Yeah, I’ve driven about 16k miles in a model 3 and have never had an issue.

Re: Why Carmakers Can’t Transition to Newer Chips

#287

Post by bsder » Sun, Oct 03, 2021, 3:12 AM UTC

VLM wrote: post #187

kazinator wrote: post #148

Any discussion about why you can't transition to newer chips that doesn't mention the software is incomplete. Chips are not fungible in part because of software compatibility. OK, so you got a newer chip, and have redesigned the board and everything to fit. Now you have to get all the old firmware running on it and validate it. If the new chip isn't a 100% backwards compatible version of the old one, including all th…

In the long run we'll only use FPGAs and soft cores. In 2050 if your old 2035 Ford needs a new ECU you'll just stuck a somewhat newer and larger FPGA on it, and if the 2035 ECU needs three hardware I2C bus with clock stretching, one of which bus has to do 10 bit I2C addrs and it also needs three hardware PWM pins with 11 bit resolution and two 8051 cores running at 5.25 MHz each and two CANBUS, you (or more likely Fo…

> In the long run we'll only use FPGAs and soft cores.

People have been saying this for decades and it is no truer today than it was then.

FPGAs and soft cores lose on cost and power--which are both ferociously tracked engineering goals when you have real volumes.

To a first and second order, if all FPGAs suddenly disappeared, nobody would care. Networking and test equipment would get somewhat more expensive and double their lead times. Nobody else would notice.

Re: Why Carmakers Can’t Transition to Newer Chips

#288

Post by csours » Sun, Oct 03, 2021, 3:15 AM UTC

alfiedotwtf wrote: post #256

tablespoon wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ajax Fasteners where a small manufacturer in the name of Division of Labour, and when they went into receivership, it took down Australia's entire car industry. Let me repeat - Australia no longer has a car industry. Holy crap: https://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2006/s1719988.htm You'd think the car companies could have just bought the manufacturing assets of the supplier if it was this critical (that's assu…

Holy crap indeed ... but the Australian car industry was nothing more than rent seeking anyway, so it was a good thing we stopped funding a non-utility.

Do you think there was a moment when the utility stopped, or was it a process? I'm only really familiar with the last days of the Australian car industry.

Re: Why Carmakers Can’t Transition to Newer Chips

#289

Post by BenjiWiebe » Sun, Oct 03, 2021, 4:08 AM UTC

rapjr9 wrote: post #280

LennyWhiteJr wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To elaborate on this, the feature sets on these low level microcontrollers are no standardized. There is no common API for them to implement. Even chips coming from the same manufacturer will have different hardware capabilities, and although low-level drivers can abstract that way to a certain extent, there will always be differences. The biggest challenge is when you need to update your firmware to use a microcontr…

I see this as a failing of microprocessor design. I/O should be standardized and there should be high level API's that do not change across chips or companies. MCU's are intentionally fragile in this respect to try to lock buyers into one MCU product family. It is absolutely stupid that I/O ports work differently for different MCU's and don't use a common API. It means every designer always has to reinvent the wheel…

Thank goodness they don't all use a standardized design. What if the standard design was the wrong one? You couldn't switch to a competitor with a better design!

Re: Why Carmakers Can’t Transition to Newer Chips

#290

Post by modriano » Sun, Oct 03, 2021, 4:14 AM UTC

alfiedotwtf wrote: post #243

hinkley wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The suppliers are running in pretty thin margins aren’t they? Did they really have any choice but to cancel those orders or potentially go bankrupt? If you sit on someone’s shoulders and forget that they’re doing most of the work, you can be shocked all you want when they collapse out from under you but nobody on the ground is going to have any sympathy at all for you. I’ve worked for software subcontractors and it’s…

> If you sit on someone’s shoulders and forget that they’re doing most of the work, you can be shocked all you want when they collapse out from under you but nobody on the ground is going to have any sympathy at all for you. Ajax Fasteners where a small manufacturer in the name of Division of Labour, and when they went into receivership, it took down Australia's entire car industry. Let me repeat - Australia no longe…

I looked up Ajax Fasteners to see if they made more than fasteners, and it seems like fasteners really were the bulk of their business. How can it possibly be true that there were no other suitable fastener suppliers in a country with massive mining, steel/aluminium production, and other heavy industries? It sounds like there's a story here.