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

Welcome Chris Lattner

tesla.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 291 posts

Re: Welcome Chris Lattner

#101

Post by tawaycozstoned »

tma-1 wrote: post #94
abalone wrote: post #70

What's really interesting about this is not just that Lattner is brilliant and liked, but that is highlights just how critical software correctness and reliability is to autonomous vehicles. Naively one might have expected some machine learning expert to take over the reins at Tesla. But fast-moving Silicon Valley needs a fundamental shift in quality standards when it comes to safety-critical software, and if you loo…

Well considering that most of the autopilot software is driven by black box deep neural networks, I don't think hiring someone with a strong coding background is going to make that much of a difference when it comes to safety.

Sure it is. NNs can behave non-deterministic (i.e. they produce different output for same input because AFAIK some operations on GPUs are undeterministic) and it makes sense to invest into software systems that clearly take a closer look on software correctness.

One idea to get correcter code is clean code layout (I heard good things about the LLVM code base), simple to read code and compilers that exploit theoretical knowledge we gained over years of compiler and type theory research. I think Chris Lattner has expertise in all of them (or at least knows about their importance, contributions and drawbacks), and if want to build a full-blown self-driving car it is important to have no indeterminism in your car, and advanced languages and compilers help to guarantee specific statements about your code.

So it absolutely makes sense to invest in your compiler research team for safety, as our security, reliability and correctness expectations will rise (which is good) in particular for self-driving cars (they are not just DNNs).

Re: Welcome Chris Lattner

#102

Post by sulam »

xenadu02 wrote: post #75
mrkd wrote: post #32

Elon Musk is the new Steve Jobs. He is an inspirational leader and talented people want to work with him. It appears it will be harder and harder to attract and keep talent at Apple with out a leader like Steve Jobs.

Perhaps you're reading too much into things? Chris Lattner has been at Apple for over 11 years. He shepherded LLVM, Clang, lldb, and Swift. All while climbing the ranks to Director. A huge number of engineers would simply be ready to think about and do something different after that much time. You might say that Elon answers "Why Tesla?" but in no way can you claim an answer to "Why leave Apple?". (I have no inside k…

Apple is famous for having some of the most tenured employees in the valley. 11 years is good, but not particularly long there. Google will be the next Apple in this regard, I predict.

Re: Welcome Chris Lattner

#103

Post by munificent »

Angostura wrote: post #55
aschampion wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Language shapes perception shapes language, so it's absolutely worthwhile to be vigilant and critical about the idioms we endorse by adopting, especially for engineered phrases (e.g., "right to work").

I absolutely agree about the power of language to shape thought. But consider, whenever you've heard of company A poaching employee Y from company B, has it really subtly made you think of Y as a helpless object? Whenever, I see it, I think of the two companies plying Y with enticements, with Y manipulating them until (s)he finally gets rich rewards with the new company.

> whenever you've heard of company A poaching employee Y from company B, has it really subtly made you think of Y as a helpless object?

Yes. If that wasn't what someone was trying to convey, why did they pick the word "poach" in the first place? The whole point of using that word is to evoke a metaphor where the hired employee is mere game animal ensnared by the company.

> I think of the two companies plying Y with enticements, with Y manipulating them until (s)he finally gets rich rewards with the new company.

"Hire" is a good verb for that.

Re: Welcome Chris Lattner

#104

Post by localhost »

n00b101 wrote: post #44
gtrubetskoy wrote: post #23

There's got to be more to this story. You don't spend years developing a language (Swift) as culmination of previous work (LLVM) and then abandon it for a job in a relatively new and different discipline. It doesn't make much sense to me.

My guess is that the Tesla Autopilot Software team is working on language/compiler abstractions to reduce their dependency on semiconductor hardware manufacturers, particularly NVIDIA [1]. NVIDIA hardware has been Tesla cars for many years, and they have a dominating position in both embedded and data center hardware for self-driving AI, and they are not afraid to partner with Tesla's competitors [2]. This whole ecos…

Or perhaps they want to go down the road of FPGA / ASIC. There is some LLVM based FPGA tooling around today [1], but perhaps they want to uplevel the core programming language to a new programming language? Chris has done this already from Obj-C to Swift.

[1] http://llvm.org/devmtg/2014-10/Slides/Baker-CustomHardwareSt...

Re: Welcome Chris Lattner

#105

Post by [deleted] »

tawaycozstoned wrote: post #101
tma-1 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well considering that most of the autopilot software is driven by black box deep neural networks, I don't think hiring someone with a strong coding background is going to make that much of a difference when it comes to safety.

Sure it is. NNs can behave non-deterministic (i.e. they produce different output for same input because AFAIK some operations on GPUs are undeterministic) and it makes sense to invest into software systems that clearly take a closer look on software correctness. One idea to get correcter code is clean code layout (I heard good things about the LLVM code base), simple to read code and compilers that exploit theoretica…

[deleted]

Re: Welcome Chris Lattner

#106

Post by tma-1 »

tawaycozstoned wrote: post #101
tma-1 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well considering that most of the autopilot software is driven by black box deep neural networks, I don't think hiring someone with a strong coding background is going to make that much of a difference when it comes to safety.

Sure it is. NNs can behave non-deterministic (i.e. they produce different output for same input because AFAIK some operations on GPUs are undeterministic) and it makes sense to invest into software systems that clearly take a closer look on software correctness. One idea to get correcter code is clean code layout (I heard good things about the LLVM code base), simple to read code and compilers that exploit theoretica…

It ultimately depends on how much of the car's action is driven by DNNs, a miss-classification in the CNN can easily lead to a car crashing on a highway and causing a pileup. DNNs are so complex, you can't really write unit tests like you typically do for deterministic code.

That's why some of the big banks flat out refuse to implement any form of deep learning for risk analytics. They're much more reliant on simpler ML models like random forests and logistic regression that are easier to analyse and diagnose by model governance teams.

Re: Welcome Chris Lattner

#107

Post by tawaycozstoned »

pvg wrote: post #100
tawaycozstoned wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Second that. I get the different opinions, but why is it funny (the downvoting implies that it was funny). I can for 100% assure that I only nitpick because I want to understand the logical reasoning for down-voting and are scared that I am too high to understand the meaning of the phrase "It's funny you mention that". I am not a native speaker, but I know all the words, heard it in English and there exists a transla…

http://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/funny-...

So there are 2 meanings, and I read it "funny peculiar". But why is it "funny peculiar"? I think it is right to say Elon Musk is the new Steve Jobs (as in "most popular tech/computer-stuff person for the public"), so working for Tesla has some kind of "coolness" factor and they have good marketing and might beat Google's self-driving endeavors simply via time-to-market (similar to IPhone).

But why is that funny (haha) or funny (strange)? If they can build a self-driving car for the masses Elon Musk will be the uber-tech guy for a whole generation, and Tesla seen as one of the good guys with cool tech.

Re: Welcome Chris Lattner

#108

Post by stupidcar »

AsyncAwait wrote: post #80
celticninja wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Elon Musk is what Steve Jobs wanted to be. Steve Jobs thought he was changing the world with the iPhone, and while it was new it wasn't world changing. What Elon Musk does is world changing.

Probably not a popular opinion, but I think Musk is overrated. The guy has a huge ego, just like Jobs had, and while he's putting it into a nice package, he's not the guy to come up with anything; electric cars, spacecraft etc. Yes, he might change the world if/once he gets to Mars, but most of his stuff is a marketing tech demo. Bell Labs changed the world. Tesla did not.

Have you read Vance's biography of Musk? He's definitely a flawed individual in many ways, but I don't think he's fundamentally an egotist. Certainly not to the sociopathic degree many business leaders are.

And I think your categorisation of his work as a tech demo is unfair, and uninformed. SpaceX have built rockets that are delivering satellites into orbit and supplies to the international space station, and have achieved reusability. They have played a significant part in building a private sector space industry. These are not tech demos, they are real things. Can you boast any such achievement in your own life?

Likewise, Tesla have built and sold electric cars that people want. They've created a global re-charging network to supply them. And they've been the first company to deploy significant automation into the automobile market on a large scale. These are not tech demos, any more than the gigafactory rising out o the Nevada desert is.

Re: Welcome Chris Lattner

#109

Post by zump »

lawnchair_larry wrote: post #27
gtrubetskoy wrote: post #23

There's got to be more to this story. You don't spend years developing a language (Swift) as culmination of previous work (LLVM) and then abandon it for a job in a relatively new and different discipline. It doesn't make much sense to me.

There is, it's called seven figures worth of reasons.

I wonder what his salary is.

Re: Welcome Chris Lattner

#110

Post by devsquid »

abalone wrote: post #70

What's really interesting about this is not just that Lattner is brilliant and liked, but that is highlights just how critical software correctness and reliability is to autonomous vehicles. Naively one might have expected some machine learning expert to take over the reins at Tesla. But fast-moving Silicon Valley needs a fundamental shift in quality standards when it comes to safety-critical software, and if you loo…

ARC is a whole debate, but the one thing it is not is simple and I would argue its more error prone than a traditional GC. I've used it for most of my career and I have seen what sloppy/unaware coding can do to it.

Lattner is a well known expert on compilers. Having used Swift since its inception, I would call into question the reliability of the Swift LLVM compiler. In its current state (3.0.2) its absolutely terrible and does not back up the sentiment; "But fast-moving Silicon Valley needs a fundamental shift in quality standards when it comes to safety-critical software, and if you look closely, Lattner has been leading this charge at the language and compiler level".

Post reply on HN