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

Re: Why Carmakers Can’t Transition to Newer Chips

#321

Post by alfiedotwtf » Sun, Oct 03, 2021, 10:22 PM UTC

csours wrote: post #288

alfiedotwtf wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I never thought that Australia having a car industry as a utility. When something is not economically viable, unless the government want to run it for social benefit at a loss rather than a for-profit cost center, then it's never going to be able to sustain itself over the long run

Re: Why Carmakers Can’t Transition to Newer Chips

#322

Post by alfiedotwtf » Sun, Oct 03, 2021, 10:26 PM UTC

vertere wrote: post #285

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…

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...

It did died a slow death (about 7 years after Ajax), but IMHO it was the beginning of the end. There were a tonne of factors, including iron ore prices, trade tarrifs, the car industry crash in Detroit etc, but for us, I think Ajax shutting should have raise alarm bells that the end was nigh (rather than throwing hundreds of millions more to prop up foreign nations in the name of local jobs).

A good rule of thumb I have is if a politician is there at a ribbon cutting, and talks about jobs, then it's nothing more than vote buying in disguise.

Re: Why Carmakers Can’t Transition to Newer Chips

#323

Post by pas » Sun, Oct 03, 2021, 11:15 PM UTC

rwj wrote: post #264

tullianus wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most SpaceX hardware works this way: off-the-shelf processor, triply redundant, using voting to figure out if one is wrong.

SpaceX is definitely pushing the use of off the shelf components, and good on them, but things will probably be different when they are building rockets that they expect to keep in service for ten years.

Why would it be different? They can replace the CPUs every few months if they are so worried. Or they can replace only the fault ones.

The hardware doesn't spend that much time in high rad environment, it's not a sat or a rover.

Re: Why Carmakers Can’t Transition to Newer Chips

#324

Post by pas » Sun, Oct 03, 2021, 11:24 PM UTC

tantony wrote: post #281

heeen2 wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sensors are obviously important, but it doesn't really matter if two sensors conflict, the important thing is which one is consistent with their running model.

So far their biggest problem is that they allow flicker. That's why sometimes the software picks the wrong lines. (Of course this is a very hard problem. Our brain conveniently smooths over sensory changes for us, because that's how our everyday reality is. Things don't flicker in and out of existence, nor does a car suddenly appear as a different thing, then switches back.)

And if it turns out the sensor(s) failed, it has to be able to handle that too.

Re: Why Carmakers Can’t Transition to Newer Chips

#325

Post by pas » Sun, Oct 03, 2021, 11:33 PM UTC

bsder wrote: post #287

VLM wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 doub…

It could make sense if longevity (serviceability, "right to repair") were a design goal.

Re: Why Carmakers Can’t Transition to Newer Chips

#326

Post by gedy » Sun, Oct 03, 2021, 11:43 PM UTC

Zak wrote: post #278

swiley wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought you would fail most driving tests doing that.

Perhaps, but left-foot braking is a useful technique, and common practice in some forms of racing. In street driving, the main application is being ready to brake while driving normally. It is much faster to brake with the left foot hovering over the brake pedal than by moving the right foot from the throttle to the brake. Of course covering the brake pedal with the right foot precludes driving normally on a flat roa…

True but these are definitely not race drivers I'm seeing, jumpy older drivers mostly.

Re: Why Carmakers Can’t Transition to Newer Chips

#327

Post by pas » Sun, Oct 03, 2021, 11:44 PM UTC

dale_glass wrote: post #37

Wouldn't the solution be planning better? Sure, I understand that making a new car in combination with making a new ECU or brake controller on a new process is going to be stupidly dangerous and troublesome. So just don't. Rather than doing it as a part of a single project, there should be a department or separate company making the ECU/controller. This way when the semiconductor company moves forwards, ECU Group sta…

And usually this is what happens. Sort of. Big brands have new cars in the pipeline, and their product teams and thus the whole supply chain has newish stuff in development. [0] But since the market is rather fragmented/niche/specialized (even if the gross volume is large, the number of market participants is small), it simply makes no sense to launch a new component without already having orders for it.

The problem is that when COVID struck almost everything was put on hold, scrapped, and ... it simply takes too much time to get things back on track. (As there is basically a full half year of shortage.)

> are modern cars really in much need of custom silicon

Well, again, because the market is special, there's a lot of custom stuff, even if it's almost the same chip internally. Lack of openness and standardized interchangeable components lead to this. (Yes, there are a lot of aftermarket parts, but they are probably even worse.)

Also, probably the big dilemma for automakers is that they are simply not accustomed to this level of transparency in their supply chains. Now they point the blame at chipmakers, but they don't buy chips, they buy components from (the cheapest) vendors. (Who are cheap because they also never had any stored inventory, nor rainy day funds, nor any elegance and care in their designs that would allow this kind of retooling to other chips.)

[0] But only very-very-very tiny incremental newishness. Large major version upgrades are seen as something that is too risky. (See this part from the article: "Quigley added that trying to design new chips and vehicles that will use them in parallel often introduces yet more headaches.") And even if the whole industry is a decade behind, there's no time to catch up, because there's just no market need for upgrading that subcomponent to have a better software/CPU platform. Instead automakers launch wholly redesigned lines. Or source completely new components for the new set of functionalities envisioned. (But if some vendor can meet the new specs with again a bit of incremental upgrade, then that'll happen.)

Re: Why Carmakers Can’t Transition to Newer Chips

#328

Post by csours » Mon, Oct 04, 2021, 1:19 AM UTC

panick21 wrote: post #310

csours wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Small company risk is failure to grow. Big company risk is every other failure. Tesla is valued as a growth/tech company. As long as people believe in their growth, they get more cash. I don't personally understand how Tesla hasn't had more problems with their apparently uncontrolled engineering changes. At least part of it is customer enthusiasm for the product papering over any drawbacks. It's not that GM can't mak…

Have you considered that Tesla actually has a process and good engineers and good models to understand their changes? Maybe they are simply more dynamic, have better on the fly testing, more flexible software to manage their production, are more vertically integrated and have thus more control over their production. The argument that Tesla had significant more quality problems compared to others really doesn't hold m…

>"Have you considered that Tesla actually has a process and good engineers and good models to understand their changes?

Maybe they are simply more dynamic, have better on the fly testing, more flexible software to manage their production, are more vertically integrated and have thus more control over their production."

Yes. That's cost of entry. It works when the customer takes delivery.

They can also do smart things like have consistent APIs, electrical bus systems, etc (I don't know if they do, but they could)

Even with all of that, technical debt on physical products in the real world will drag you down to the depths of the ocean.

You see this with the customer experience on repairs. But like I said, Tesla is a growth company. As long as people believe Tesla is a growth company it will continue to be a growth company.

Re: Why Carmakers Can’t Transition to Newer Chips

#329

Post by karottenreibe » Mon, Oct 04, 2021, 7:00 AM UTC

panick21 wrote: post #311

giantrobot wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> building safer if not the safest cars out there Unless the car loses power and catches fire. Then you can't open the fucking doors [0]. [0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/10/23/man-died-...

Using 1 off cases based on unsubstantiated information in a lawsuit is not a persuasive argument for overall safety.

It's certainly a better argument than the GPs claim of "the safest cars out there" with 0 evidence given to substantiate that. I think it fair to refute such an unsubstantiated claim with a reported instance where safety was not maintained as can reasonably be expected.

Re: Why Carmakers Can’t Transition to Newer Chips

#330

Post by rstuart4133 » Mon, Oct 04, 2021, 10:10 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.

I followed the accelerator-gate thing fairly closely, and I came out pretty convinced it was a computer failure. If it wasn't Toyota's floor mats were many times more likely to jam the accelerator than any other make or model.

There was a plausible root cause - a bit flip in the CPU. It was proved such flipping the right bit would cause uncontrolled acceleration that characterised each event.

I don't agree Toyota was guilty of shoddy work, or cost cutting. At worst, there were guilty of working some fairly shitty, hard to support code. (Someone below mentions 10,000 global variables.) If anything that shitty code just proves how dedicated Toyota was to testing something until until all the safety related bugs are gone, because despite some horrid kludges like replying on watch dogs resetting the thing when it got stuck and a reset so fast most people wouldn't notice it, despite the intense scrutiny of the code no one every found a safety issue with it. Toyota was well aware of a electrically noisy area like a engine bay could cause bit lips, and defended against it. Every variable was stored in two places in RAM, and on use they were always read and compared, and if they differed it was reset.

Sadly for Toyota they used a proprietary ECU and OS provided by NEC. NEC didn't let their customers look at their proprietary stuff. NEC didn't defend against bit flips. And it turned out a bit flop in a task ready bit could cause that task to never be scheduled again. If that task was supposed to turn off the cruise control acceleration, then bingo.

I have no idea what changes Toyota made in response to this mess, but if I was to hazard a guess it would be when it comes to software, they demand their supplies open their source to them.