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

Why Carmakers Can’t Transition to Newer Chips

jalopnik.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 335 posts

Re: Why Carmakers Can’t Transition to Newer Chips

#181

Post by VLM »

im_down_w_otp wrote: post #77
RealityVoid wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whom, if you don't mind me asking? I would.love to see stuff change in this field.

I can't upset the NDA Gods on this one, unfortunately. I can say one is a traditional OEM that you wouldn't necessarily expect to be the sort to take vanguard steps like this and the other is a newer OEM that's not as encumbered by tradition (though due to the supply-chain also can't rid themselves of it). Shameless plug WARNING: we ( https://auxon.io ) are hiring for engineering, marketing, and BD if industrial & op…

I never signed the NDA, although I follow the space distantly, and they went public on their own website a couple years ago with a list:

BMW, Bosch, Continental, Daimler AG, Ford, General Motors, PSA Peugeot Citroën, Toyota, and Volkswagen.

I always rooted for an older competitor GENIVI which (very handwavy in a general sense) boiled down to "make dbus great again". I just always have a soft spot for anything that replaces CORBA and DCOP. More or less GENIVI had the same players as AUTOSAR.

I believe AUTOSAR suffers from trying to do too much; GENIVI's "all you need is a compatible bus" is the minimum you need so simplicate and add lightness and that's what should win; doesn't really matter if that guy runs QNX and that other guy runs FreeRTOS as long as the busses talk; whereas AUTOSAR tries to own and control everything top to bottom which just ends up stifling any productivity.

Re: Why Carmakers Can’t Transition to Newer Chips

#182

Post by buescher »

snthd wrote: post #133
csours wrote: post #51

Disclaimer up front: I work for GM. I don't work on chips or components for my day job. What follows is solely my own opinion. Some things to emphasize: OEMs (GM, Ford, Toyota, VW, etc) do not design components, and they do not want to. They design specifications for components, and then get suppliers to bid. This is great for efficiency in established ecosystems, not great for agility. To my knowledge, GM did not ca…

>40-60V system What makes that voltage a better trade off?

One of the big issues with 40-60V systems, which have been right around the corner for 20 years now, maybe more, has been that typical relay contacts arc over at about 28V DC. Yes, there are ways to adress this. No, none of them are as practical as relays yet.

Re: Why Carmakers Can’t Transition to Newer Chips

#183

Post by oceanghost »

csours wrote: post #121
mwint wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fundamentally, what is it that prevents the established auto makers from making changes mid lifecycle? Seems like Tesla keeps pulling it off; why can’t GM? Is it that the component specification+acquisition cycle you describe is optimized to take as long as the development cycle of a new car?

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…

> 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.

Re: Why Carmakers Can’t Transition to Newer Chips

#184

Post by burntwater »

useful wrote: post #118
Ekaros wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds like possible death trap. Drive Tesla to some place without range, stay out there for week. Then come back an notice car is dead and you can't reach next charging station. Maybe this is why Musk is making Starlink...

you can tow charge an electric car with another car or truck

I looked into this a few weeks ago while exploring purchasing an electric car, and from what I could find "tow charging" was experimented with but has basically been given up on. The expectation is that if you lose power, you will need a flatbed truck to cart the car to a charging station.

Re: Why Carmakers Can’t Transition to Newer Chips

#186

Post by heeen2 »

tantony wrote: post #177
kevingadd wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you square that with them removing sensors from their cars and going all-in on doing self-driving exclusively using vision? If they were so passionate about spending money to make the safest cars, they'd be doing sensor fusion.

> 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?

Re: Why Carmakers Can’t Transition to Newer Chips

#187

Post by VLM »

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 Ford) will just compile the brand new FPGA to have exactly and precisely all that stuff and it'll work fine.

Re: Why Carmakers Can’t Transition to Newer Chips

#188

Post by [deleted] »

im_down_w_otp wrote: post #77
RealityVoid wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whom, if you don't mind me asking? I would.love to see stuff change in this field.

I can't upset the NDA Gods on this one, unfortunately. I can say one is a traditional OEM that you wouldn't necessarily expect to be the sort to take vanguard steps like this and the other is a newer OEM that's not as encumbered by tradition (though due to the supply-chain also can't rid themselves of it). Shameless plug WARNING: we ( https://auxon.io ) are hiring for engineering, marketing, and BD if industrial & op…

[deleted]

Re: Why Carmakers Can’t Transition to Newer Chips

#189

Post by im_down_w_otp »

VLM wrote: post #181
im_down_w_otp wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't upset the NDA Gods on this one, unfortunately. I can say one is a traditional OEM that you wouldn't necessarily expect to be the sort to take vanguard steps like this and the other is a newer OEM that's not as encumbered by tradition (though due to the supply-chain also can't rid themselves of it). Shameless plug WARNING: we ( https://auxon.io ) are hiring for engineering, marketing, and BD if industrial & op…

I never signed the NDA, although I follow the space distantly, and they went public on their own website a couple years ago with a list: BMW, Bosch, Continental, Daimler AG, Ford, General Motors, PSA Peugeot Citroën, Toyota, and Volkswagen. I always rooted for an older competitor GENIVI which (very handwavy in a general sense) boiled down to "make dbus great again". I just always have a soft spot for anything that re…

If you look through the "Adaptive AUTOSAR" literature and documentation that's out there you can find that enormous chunks of it are lifted straight from GENIVI's stack/specs.

However, GENIVI/Adaptive-AUTOSAR tends to serve a different function in the vehicle architecture. It's mostly cockpit and less control/platform. AUTOSAR Classic is still the champ on the MCU side of the house.

Re: Why Carmakers Can’t Transition to Newer Chips

#190

Post by idiotsecant »

buescher wrote: post #182
snthd wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>40-60V system What makes that voltage a better trade off?

One of the big issues with 40-60V systems, which have been right around the corner for 20 years now, maybe more, has been that typical relay contacts arc over at about 28V DC. Yes, there are ways to adress this. No, none of them are as practical as relays yet.

This isn't really a fundamental problem. It just means using relays with contacts rated for higher voltages. It's probably the easiest part of the bom on a typical vehicle to move to a higher voltage range. I use 125VDC contact/coil rated relays all the time.
Post reply on HN