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

The Tesla Dojo Chip Is Impressive, but There Are Some Major Technical Issues

semianalysis.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 112 posts

Re: The Tesla Dojo Chip Is Impressive, but There Are Some Major Technical Issues

#61

Post by KaiserPro »

arnaudsm wrote: post #60
2bitencryption wrote: post #55

from the article: > but the short of it is that their unique system on wafer packaging and chip design choices potentially allow an order magnitude advantage over competing AI hardware in training of massive multi-trillion parameter networks. I kind of wonder if Tesla is building the Juicero of self-driving. [0] Beautifully designed. An absolute marvel of engineering. The result of brilliant people with tons of money…

The Juicero comparison doesn't hold up. LIDAR is 10x more expensive than RGB, but neither reach lvl5 at the moment. I'm glad multiple companies try multiple paths, it's the best way to avoid a research dead-end.

> LIDAR is 10x more expensive than RGB

but pure RGB needs $millions to make a reliable realtime depth sensor, plus custom silicon and a massive annotated dataset.

It might just be that one company can do it, but its a hefty gamble.

Re: The Tesla Dojo Chip Is Impressive, but There Are Some Major Technical Issues

#62

Post by dragontamer »

samstave wrote: post #48
dragontamer wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> could we have had an autonomous rail system by now? We already have autonomous rail systems. Its called positive train control and was fully implemented like a year or two ago (mandated in 2009, but you know how government works, lol) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_train_control The train conductor has become more-and-more automated to remove the chance of human error. It works with a system of very reliabl…

Remember that derailment/near derailment that happened when someone cut the electrical circuit connector cable on some rails, which then prevented the system for knowing where the train was?

PTC, from my understanding, is that the train gets "positive orders" from a central server. The central server says "It is safe to move through X", and the train then moves through X.

If the sensor in X is broken, then the server will say "I cannot prove it is safe to move through X", and the train will stop.

I'm not a transportation engineer however, so I'll defer to anyone with actual experience in the field. But the idea is that our sensors are so effective today, that it is better to "prove" each leg of the journey is safe with "positive train control", rather than the opposite normal approach. (Ex: Sensor detects a problem, which stops the train).

That is to say: all sensors in the USA are in positive-train control mode. Trains will therefore stop if any sensor malfunctions. We're now in a "default stop" state for all trains, unless those sensors are working, deployed across USA.

Re: The Tesla Dojo Chip Is Impressive, but There Are Some Major Technical Issues

#63

Post by llsf »

dragontamer wrote: post #39
jvanderbot wrote: post #37

As Hamming suggested in "Art of doing science and engineering", when you want to make something autonomous, you usually have to build a completely different device that solves the same problem, rather than automating the same device. I wonder. For all the money thrown into self-driving cars research , could we have had an autonomous rail system by now? The technology for mostly-autonomous rail is well understood. Mos…

> could we have had an autonomous rail system by now? We already have autonomous rail systems. Its called positive train control and was fully implemented like a year or two ago (mandated in 2009, but you know how government works, lol) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_train_control The train conductor has become more-and-more automated to remove the chance of human error. It works with a system of very reliabl…

Paris got its first autonomous metro line in 1998. It was developed in ADA. http://archive.adaic.com/projects/atwork/paris.html

Using the B method: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B-Method

https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%252F3-540-4811...

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2005.07190.pdf

All this was developed in the 80's and 90's. It would be interesting to see how this evolved. Obviously with a ML/AI approach it would be different now. Although there might be some ways to specify some constraints or boundaries to an AI system, for safety, comfort, physics, etc.

Re: The Tesla Dojo Chip Is Impressive, but There Are Some Major Technical Issues

#64

Post by dragontamer »

llsf wrote: post #63
dragontamer wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> could we have had an autonomous rail system by now? We already have autonomous rail systems. Its called positive train control and was fully implemented like a year or two ago (mandated in 2009, but you know how government works, lol) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_train_control The train conductor has become more-and-more automated to remove the chance of human error. It works with a system of very reliabl…

Paris got its first autonomous metro line in 1998. It was developed in ADA. http://archive.adaic.com/projects/atwork/paris.html Using the B method: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B-Method https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%252F3-540-4811... https://arxiv.org/pdf/2005.07190.pdf All this was developed in the 80's and 90's. It would be interesting to see how this evolved. Obviously with a ML/AI approach it wou…

> Obviously with a ML/AI approach it would be different now.

Is it? The theory of block signals and path signals don't change because AI was invented. And I have my doubts that AI could do better than path-signal algorithms.

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

OpenTTD players, wassup? You can run these block signals / path signals in video games. Its a bit complicated to setup and the terminology is arcane... but the algorithms aren't so advanced that they require "AI" or anything. (If at block signal, wait until exit signal is ready. Etc. etc.). Its actually pretty fun (OpenTTD is a videogame built around these signals!!), because if you mess up your signals, you get deadlocks and/or "race conditions" (aka: risk of a deadly crash). But once you get used to the methodology, you can build incredibly complex junctions that automatically and safely routes trains everywhere.

That's why you had legions of railway nerds playing with trains in their basement all day: they're trying to get their path signals / block signals / chain signals correct so that those toy trains traverse their toy-tracks automatically without crashing. These concepts were like, from the 1930s or something (Path signals are newer)

EDIT: Apparently "before 1923": https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/117705681X. Definitely an ancient and arcane art of old wizards. Railway engineers were dealing with semaphores, race conditions, and deadlocks __LONG__ before us programmers even existed!!

Re: The Tesla Dojo Chip Is Impressive, but There Are Some Major Technical Issues

#65

Post by dnautics »

jvanderbot wrote: post #44
dragontamer wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> could we have had an autonomous rail system by now? We already have autonomous rail systems. Its called positive train control and was fully implemented like a year or two ago (mandated in 2009, but you know how government works, lol) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_train_control The train conductor has become more-and-more automated to remove the chance of human error. It works with a system of very reliabl…

I wonder if, for the cost spent on CPU-and-engineer-driven research and development of autonomous cars, if we could have had nationwide autonomous rail rolled out .

Not for passengers. You still need conductors, if for no other reason to be the equivalent of flight attendants (there for extremely rare safety incidents -- deaths per passenger mile are higher for trains than planes -- to manage unruly passengers, etc.)

Re: The Tesla Dojo Chip Is Impressive, but There Are Some Major Technical Issues

#66

Post by gimmeThaBeet »

TomVDB wrote: post #28
eddanger wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My astute guess is ASML.

That astute guess is so out of left field that it needs at least a bit of justification. To my limited ASML knowledge, ASML is a fab equipment maker, not a silicon IP procider.

Correct, that's a bit of an odd guess. You are definitely working closely with your foundry on something like this, but unless you are building some truly exotic device, I don't think their vendor is getting involved.

Like Melkman says, Broadcom is a good guess. Not only for past rumors, but iirc they also did work with google's TPU (could never figure out if that was actually confirmed?). Interconnect IP like that is definitely in their wheelhouse.

Re: The Tesla Dojo Chip Is Impressive, but There Are Some Major Technical Issues

#67

Post by hamiltonkibbe »

samstave wrote: post #45
jvanderbot wrote: post #37

As Hamming suggested in "Art of doing science and engineering", when you want to make something autonomous, you usually have to build a completely different device that solves the same problem, rather than automating the same device. I wonder. For all the money thrown into self-driving cars research , could we have had an autonomous rail system by now? The technology for mostly-autonomous rail is well understood. Mos…

I've always wondered if TCP and networking design could be applied to autonomous traffic... basically think of every car/train as a packet and ensure no collisions... Which networking protocol best maps to this? And what if we had smart traffic lights that were aware of every car in an surrounding area of an intersection... I mean FFS certain tech companies track all vehicles that drive by/near their corporate campus…

For the most part the MAC just looks for another signal on the wire (another train on the same section of rail) and when it looks clear, starts transmitting (driving). As you can imagine, there will be cases when 2 MACs start talking at the same time, at which point they detect the collision, wait a random delay and try again. I wouldn’t want to be on that train, I’d prefer plain old serial with hardware flow control

Re: The Tesla Dojo Chip Is Impressive, but There Are Some Major Technical Issues

#68

Post by wumpus »

jeffbee wrote: post #46
zdragnar wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We could have possibly automated some existing rail, but I am not altogether certain that doing so would have lead to any significant improvements in cost or efficiency. Actually laying the infrastructure for mass transit via rail is an entirely different league of cost from what has been dumped into self driving cars. We have a hard enough time agreeing on how to do light rail transit in places that want it, and the…

A self-driving streetcar, that only has 1 degree of freedom, might be a practical problem to solve and maybe if it existed we would not have had to go through the 90-day outage of VTA light rail service that the Bay Area just experienced, an experience which in all likelihood killed VTA light rail forever.

VTA restarted service a couple of days ago.

Re: The Tesla Dojo Chip Is Impressive, but There Are Some Major Technical Issues

#69

Post by vishnugupta »

jvanderbot wrote: post #37

As Hamming suggested in "Art of doing science and engineering", when you want to make something autonomous, you usually have to build a completely different device that solves the same problem, rather than automating the same device. I wonder. For all the money thrown into self-driving cars research , could we have had an autonomous rail system by now? The technology for mostly-autonomous rail is well understood. Mos…

> build a completely different device that solves the same problem

I realised this while discussing self-driving cars with my friends.

I used example of Uber Eats. The problem statement is "I don't want to cook" and a reasonably acceptable solution IMO is cloud kitchens + delivery. As opposed to building a cooking robot.

Cloud kitchens could automate 80% of repeatable stuff because it makes sense to solve that problem at scale.

Re: The Tesla Dojo Chip Is Impressive, but There Are Some Major Technical Issues

#70

Post by rini17 »

samstave wrote: post #45
jvanderbot wrote: post #37

As Hamming suggested in "Art of doing science and engineering", when you want to make something autonomous, you usually have to build a completely different device that solves the same problem, rather than automating the same device. I wonder. For all the money thrown into self-driving cars research , could we have had an autonomous rail system by now? The technology for mostly-autonomous rail is well understood. Mos…

I've always wondered if TCP and networking design could be applied to autonomous traffic... basically think of every car/train as a packet and ensure no collisions... Which networking protocol best maps to this? And what if we had smart traffic lights that were aware of every car in an surrounding area of an intersection... I mean FFS certain tech companies track all vehicles that drive by/near their corporate campus…

Large part of TCP is dealing with dropped packets. Presumably you don't want that to carry that over to rail/road traffic :)
Post reply on HN