Tesla Is Working With AMD To Develop Its Own AI Chip For Self-Driving Cars (cnbc.com) 50
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: Tesla is getting closer to having its own chip for handling autonomous driving tasks in its cars. The carmaker has received back samples of the first implementation of its processor and is now running tests on it, said a source familiar with the matter. The effort to build its own chip is in line with Tesla's push to be vertically integrated and decrease reliance on other companies. But Tesla isn't completely going it alone in chip development, according to the source, and will build on top of AMD intellectual property. On Wednesday Sanjay Jha, CEO of AMD spin-off GlobalFoundries, said at the company's technology conference in Santa Clara, California, that the company is working directly with Tesla. GlobalFoundries, which fabricates chips, has a wafer supply agreement in place with AMD through 2020. Tesla's silicon project is bounding ahead under the leadership of longtime chip architect Jim Keller, the head of Autopilot hardware and software since the departure of Apple veteran Chris Lattner in June. Keller, 57, joined Tesla in early 2016 following two stints at AMD and one at Apple. Keller arrived at Apple in 2008 through its acquisition of Palo Alto Semiconductor and was the designer of Apple's A4 and A5 iPhone chips, among other things. More than 50 people are working on the initiative under Keller, the source said. Tesla has brought on several AMD veterans after hiring Keller, including director Ganesh Venkataramanan, principal hardware engineer Bill McGee and system circuit design lead Dan Bailey.
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what it probably means is that the time of cranking up the GHz or moar cores for paper specs is over. if you want performance then you need to design your own custom silicon and software to take advantage of like Apple has done
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It also brings the risk of some truly epic fuck-ups that affect them and not other companies that didn't try to roll their own outside of their areas of core expertise.
But it protects them from exploits that would affect other companies that used commodity parts.
Re: Wrong approach (Score:1)
Indeed it does. One might even say they will get some extra security due to the obscurity of their hardware. Yup sirree.
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Indeed it does. One might even say they will get some extra security due to the obscurity of their hardware. Yup sirree.
They could call it Security through Obscurity. I am going to rush off and see if I can copyright the name.
Wtf are you talking about? (Score:3)
"given today's technology and established code base, for them to use anything but inexpensive, commodity parts for this"
This is a highly specialised application. Sometimes commodity parts are too inefficient and/or slow to be a good choice in these situations.
"there are a lot of people who can code for them"
With modern compilers being able to code for a specific chipset is less relevant. Also while there are many experienced to-the-metal assembly language coders and there are many experienced people who can
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Better run along sonny, I think your mummy is calling you for dinner.
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She doesn't own a donkey AFAIK. Oh, did you mean a-r-s-e? Buy a dictionary.
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It's simpler than that - if Tesla adopts it, it will become a commodity part. Tesla is looking to start Model 3 full produciton at 500k per year, scaling up eventually to 700k per year, and then do the same with the Model Y, all just in the next several years (not to mention future products). Whether or not they manage to achieve their goals, these are their goals. Every last one of them will come with Autopilot hardware, regardless of whether or not the person purchased Autopilot. Millions of units per y
Re: Wtf are you talking about? (Score:2)
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Elon through a tantrum
Is he channeling his inner Steve Jobs? Jobs did the same thing to ATI when they screwed up and leaked specs [zdnet.com] of unreleased Macs.
Re:Wrong approach (Score:5, Insightful)
For AI/machine learning the parts are rather specialized. For example, look at Google's tensor processing unit (TPU) [google.com]. Machine learning typically involves a lot of large integer matrix multiply operations where dedicated hardware makes a big difference in performance.
For example, Google's TPU consists of 64K 8-bit multipliers in a 256x256 array along with around 4M adders. A general purpose CPU or even a GPU will not be nearly as optimal. Google's TPU performance per watt is around 83x as good as a CPU and 28x as good as a GPU.
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They can't bundle hidden things into easily reverse engineered tech.
Never forger the rationale for consumer driverless cars:
Why would you want to re
Incorrect story (Score:5, Informative)
According to Tom's Hardware, this story is a misunderstanding, and does not represent the actual words of the presentation.
From TH:
Some media outlets are reporting that GlobalFoundries is working with Tesla on AI technology for its cars. This erroneous report stems from a comment GloFlo's CEO Sanjay Jha made on stage on Wednesday at the fab's annual get-together in San Jose. ...
But what Jha actually said—which we can confirm because we were present to hear it firsthand—was that GlobalFoundries is trying to attract companies as business models change:
"As we develop these new technologies, we are also seeing a big shift in the business model and the foundry business. What is happening is that system companies like Google, like Amazon, like Tesla, like Microsoft, are coming directly to foundries. They are working directly with IP companies and system development companies because they want to control the hardware and software."
Global Foundries is not saying that it's working with Tesla--but that's not to say that AMD isn't working with Tesla. Jim Keller, formerly the chief architect for AMD's microprocessors, is now VP of autopilot hardware at Tesla.
Last year, AMD lost what Tesla CEO Elon Musk called a tight race against Nvidia for the auto company's GPU/AI business. Since that time, AMD has continued to show strength across multiple sectors.
The CNBC report said that its sources tied AMD and Tesla together, but neither AMD or Tesla will comment on the situation. The report indicated that Tesla was on a mission to develop its own chip for autonomous cars in order to be more vertically integrated, but that Tesla was potentially relying on building that "on top of AMD intellectual property." That particular wording certainly paints a dotted line to GlobalFoundries.
Full story at http://www.tomshardware.com/ne... [tomshardware.com]
Auto companies, patents, etc (Score:5, Interesting)
Florian Mueller predicts the (German) auto companies will become patent trolls, as the tech industry takes over autonomous car design:
http://www.fosspatents.com/201... [fosspatents.com]
Are we going to see a convergence, where tech companies and auto companies team up, or a divergence, where tech companies produce the new vehicles and legacy car companies shrink into irrelevance?
The only thing I can predict with great confidence is that the cost for a replacement CPU board for a Tesla will be A Lot More than the cost of the constituent parts. (Nissan charged me $1500 for a truck wiring harness after mice chewed the insulation. It's really hard to believe that almost 6% of the cost of that truck was in the wiring harness.)
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(Nissan charged me $1500 for a truck wiring harness after mice chewed the insulation. It's really hard to believe that almost 6% of the cost of that truck was in the wiring harness.)
It certainly is not, although Automakers do tend to use high-quality connectors which are actually expensive in and of themselves. However, they are expensive to produce — even a simple harness without any connectors retails for hundreds of dollars [amazon.com]. Granted, that includes a fuse panel, but it's not much of a fuse panel. My complete engine underhood harness includes a small fuse panel with a relay on it, neither you nor I wants to know what Audi would want for a complete one new but used they run aroun
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Yeah, car wiring harnesses have grown into beasts - it's pretty crazy how much of a car's manufacturing cost they now represent. Shrinking and simplifying the wiring harness has been the biggest "non-EV-specific" issue that Tesla has been focused on tackling.
Re: Auto companies, patents, etc (Score:1)
LIN and CAN were intended to reduce the cost of automotive wire harnesses. It's odd (or not, this is automotive we are talking about) that costs and complexity are up.
Ok, it's not. I have direct experience in the automotive controls biz. GM just discovered the existence of capacitors for despiking in the last year. The automotive sector, at least in Detroit, is chuck full of boneheads.
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Autoparts are a weird business with a bunch of international treaties. Maybe the tech companies will break the guilds and cartels.
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The tech companies are going to be in for an entertaining world of hurt if they think they can just show up and start cranking out products the way they've always done it.
Automotive, industrial, aerospace, rail and other 'life and limb' companies have done things their own way for a while for a reason. We have functional safety standards that have no 'tech company' equivalent (that I've seen). ISO 26262, IEC 61508, DO-178C, ASIL A-D, etc. From what I've found Intel and AMD don't have any chips that meet th
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We hear this a lot, but that doesn't explain the success that Tesla has had.
Sure, Tesla has some reliability problems and some software-related faults with the autonomous driving. But it's not the total catastrophic corporate failure that so many from the 'old industry' predicted.
And I'm reminded of how people said a bit more than 10 years ago, "No way Apple will waltz in, produce a new phone and change the way the TELCOs work." ;-)
Re: Auto companies, patents, etc (Score:1)
The success Tesla has had is in applying the PayPal business philosophy to automotive. It's certainly the kind of thing that gets eyeballs. Websites and journalists just eat it up.
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My friend with one hasn't had any problems (yet).
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I have never, ever, had any problems with PayPal.
I've heard stories, though....
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The industry answer was " 'Cos we can". The small claims tribunals thought that was a bit shit.
Is there enough battery power (Score:2)
in a Tesla to run some AMD gear?
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in a Tesla to run some AMD gear?
Don't worry, they are working on Mr. Fusion too
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Is there enough battery power in a Tesla to run some AMD gear?
Yes, but in hard driving conditions, when all the wheels are loaded, there is a chance of segfault...
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As a side note, you actually can use a mouse to control the infotainment system in Teslas by plugging it into a USB port ;) Sadly, USB keyboards don't work. [youtube.com]
Complete BS (Score:5, Informative)
I was at the Global Foundries event and the keynote, no such thing was said. The Keynote recordings did not say that either, Tesla was mentioned as an example but the article is badly off base, so badly that it seems intentional. I checked with the speakers in question, other journalists, and the PR people at the show, ALL confirmed the story was not true and what was claimed to have been said was not.
-Charlie
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Aww, how cute! [tumblr.com]
Sounds like marketing bullshit (Score:3)
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Nobody is talking about "generalized AI". The topic of concern is very specialized AI tasks. We have a wide variety of AI systems in use for specialized tasks in our everyday lives - particularly in the topic of image recognition.
It's already very popular among many
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One example of the type of processing they need is Google's Tensor Processing Unit (TPU) [google.com]. This chip is designed for offloading much of the machine learning processing that is involved.
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Autonomous driving cars don't use machine learning (in the sense if neural networks)
At least not at the moment.
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Just to follw up to your parent:
Also how the hell do you have a 'self driving car chip' when the technology realisitically isn't even really close to ready for the general public?
The majour brands, BMW, Mercedes, Porsche, Audi, and from Japan at least Toyota have self driving cars since a decade.
The only things missing are full autonomy, as in surround lidar, standards for communicating with humand drivers (e.g. blinking lights to indicate yielding or acceleration) and: legislation chanfes.
Most brands have
Suddenly AMD's weakness becomes its greatest asset (Score:2)