Tesla is building its own AI chips for self-driving cars • Hacker News Board

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

#101

Post by Retric » Thu, Aug 02, 2018, 3:56 PM UTC

simion314 wrote: post #88

Retric wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO the difference between self driving and driver assist is who is usually in charge of the car. If the car is going to hit the breaks because it thinks you are going to hit someone otherwise that's driver assist. If you as a driver need chose to hit the breaks because you don't trust the car that's self driving. Further, the difference between OK and an accident is normally fractions of a second. So, my suspicion i…

Autopilot/self driving is more complicated there are 5 levels I think. Anyway I am waiting for some government institution or maybe the lawsuit to get more data then we can use that to make informed conclusions.

Sure, that could still happen. But, they introduced it in 2014 and they are still on the road so they seem to be past the wildly unsafe stage I was expecting.

IMO, the largest risk is an over the air update killing a large number of people.

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

#102

Post by aphextron » Thu, Aug 02, 2018, 3:56 PM UTC

mattigames wrote: post #64

planteen wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have also conflated silicon and silicone, which is humorous.

Blame the English language for making the name of 2 popular industrial materials with such similar names.

But the materials are not even remotely similar. Silicon is a metallic element. Silicone is a polymer. Anyone who would make that mistake clearly has zero idea what they’re talking about, and it makes me question the entire article.

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

#103

Post by cma » Thu, Aug 02, 2018, 4:01 PM UTC

antris wrote: post #60

slivym wrote: post #35

>By having its own silicone, Tesla can build for its own needs at its own pace. If they suddenly recognize something the hardware is lacking, they’re not waiting on someone else to build it. It’s by no means a trivial task — but if they can pull it off without breaking the bank (and Elon says it costs them “the same as the current hardware”), it could end up being a significant strength. I outright snorted at this. T…

>Tesla has it's own hardware platform. Anyone with an ounce of sense will know that was always going to happen because of power consumption, cost and performance ... so that they can create performance-intensive features that nobody else in the market yet has, because the off-the-shelf hardware won't allow it. Due to power consumption, cost and performance issues. And this custom hardware is being developed to solve…

Other people are going to be using inferencing chips soon too. Tesla might even just be basing it all on NVDLA (Nvidia's open source inferencing hardware targeted at self driving) and calling it their own.

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

#104

Post by opencl » Thu, Aug 02, 2018, 4:03 PM UTC

tim333 wrote: post #77

Fricken wrote: post #45

Right now, with HW2 Tesla is in kind of an awkward no man's land where their hardware is overkill for basic ADAS, but nowhere near enough for any kind of autonomy that allows the driver to turn their attention away from the driving task. By going to a custom ASIC with inferencing. I have little doubt about Musk's claim that it'll offer a 10x improvement over the current stripped down PX Drive2 variant for deep learni…

It's hard to say for sure they are no where near full autonomy in their research although their current vehicles crashing into barriers and fire trucks obviously don't cut it.

If they were anywhere near full autonomy that LA-to-NYC demo they keep promising would have already happened.

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

#105

Post by izend » Thu, Aug 02, 2018, 4:03 PM UTC

Fricken wrote: post #45

Right now, with HW2 Tesla is in kind of an awkward no man's land where their hardware is overkill for basic ADAS, but nowhere near enough for any kind of autonomy that allows the driver to turn their attention away from the driving task. By going to a custom ASIC with inferencing. I have little doubt about Musk's claim that it'll offer a 10x improvement over the current stripped down PX Drive2 variant for deep learni…

What is Waymo using? Custom ASIC?

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

#106

Post by CPLX » Thu, Aug 02, 2018, 4:05 PM UTC

mattigames wrote: post #64

planteen wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have also conflated silicon and silicone, which is humorous.

Blame the English language for making the name of 2 popular industrial materials with such similar names.

Indeed, it's an easy mistake to make, as I discovered when I lost my 30 foot catamaran at a local coat check.

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

#107

Post by nikofeyn » Thu, Aug 02, 2018, 4:06 PM UTC

Ultimatt wrote: post #54

nikofeyn wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there is something fundamentally different between a machine and human. how the brain operates is not well known, so to claim our brain is a neural network made of meat is just a guess. the truth is, people have a lot of experience with other people. we can usually predict behavior of other drivers on the road, and can even predict pathological behavior or know how to handle it. that is a major point. when machines a…

The fault hardly matters, the issue is one of safety. Humans are not safe already. Yet you feel entirely fine on the road. Humans are clearly not the same as ANNs but they are a network of neurones and the cognitive ability of a driver is not verified anywhere near frequently enough globally. In the UK post driving test about the only time anyone will check you for ability to drive is when you are declared blind from…

i do not feel perfectly safe or fine with humans driving. i hate driving in the area i live because no matter how much i pay attention, it is simply an unsafe environment with the amount of cars, scooters, bicyclists, and pedestrians within the given infrastructure. however, my ability to predict both good and bad behavior in these environments helps a lot. there is no way i see automated vehicles handling city driving in dense urban areas any time soon.

of course safety is important. and i agree that verifying driving ability is well behind where it should be. elderly and inexperienced and inattentive and just plain bad drivers are major problems on the roads.

and fault certainly does matter. aside from legal responsibility, we are emotional beings. there is a difference between getting hit by a drunk driver versus a true accident. that affects people in real ways. as a motorcycle driver, i will be terrified of these automated vehicles. i am already terrified of human drivers, but i can often predict their idiocracy.

no one wants to be killed by a machine, especially one built by wide-eyed engineers.

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

#108

Post by mikestew » Thu, Aug 02, 2018, 4:07 PM UTC

aphextron wrote: post #102

mattigames wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blame the English language for making the name of 2 popular industrial materials with such similar names.

But the materials are not even remotely similar. Silicon is a metallic element. Silicone is a polymer. Anyone who would make that mistake clearly has zero idea what they’re talking about, and it makes me question the entire article.

And both words have a one letter difference, which makes an easy typo, and could slip past an editor, I suppose. You’re centering on the disparate meaning of the words, leading to incredulity, when you might do better to focus on the question of how such an obvious mistake slipped through the cracks.

IOW, yeah, it’s a crap article, but not for this reason.

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

#109

Post by rohit2412 » Thu, Aug 02, 2018, 4:07 PM UTC

Ultimatt wrote: post #13

titzer wrote: post #3

This is pretty bad from a hardware/software verification perspective. People who care about correctness can just go home, I guess. It's amazing that we're gonna let these things on the streets. When you weigh almost 2 tons and can go >100mph, it doesn't matter if you have a gun mounted on you or not, you are a weapon .

Yeah because all the verified neural networks made from meat travelling >100mph are legit ok to drive 100% of the time. There are no road accident deaths to speak of.

That is only an argument for more assistive solutions. Just because humans have faults doesn't mean we should replace them with computers that are very likely to be even more dangerous. Augment, not replace should be the aim. And seems to be the aim for most manufacturers, but not Tesla. They have to claim full autonomy.

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

#110

Post by Fricken » Thu, Aug 02, 2018, 4:07 PM UTC

izend wrote: post #105

Fricken wrote: post #45

Right now, with HW2 Tesla is in kind of an awkward no man's land where their hardware is overkill for basic ADAS, but nowhere near enough for any kind of autonomy that allows the driver to turn their attention away from the driving task. By going to a custom ASIC with inferencing. I have little doubt about Musk's claim that it'll offer a 10x improvement over the current stripped down PX Drive2 variant for deep learni…

What is Waymo using? Custom ASIC?

Waymo pretty top-secret about their hardware, so I'm not sure. I would venture to guess that if they don't have a custom ASIC yet they're working on one. I know they had Intel FPGAs and it's a safe bet they've integrated Google's tensor core architecture.