Concern over performance of "8 years of software updates"

[Gig103]

When I started my voyage into Telsa I was excited for the software updates, because it meant I wasn't buying a car frozen in time.

But in part of the Enhanced AP announcement was the tidbit that the new control unit has "40x the processing power", and in September Elon Musk admitted to “almost reaching the limit of the hardware” (source). It isn't clear to me if Musk's quote refers to computational power or the AP hardware.

But still - are we going to find ourselves like iPhone owners, where software updates are technically available for download, but will bog down and become laggy since we're on outdated hardware? I don't know anyone with an 8 year old desktop computer or smartphone, is Tesla really going to be able to achieve the 8 year promise?

 

[Footer]

I think the bigger concern is can Tesla afford to keep making improvements to old software. There are roughly 100,000 cars with AP1.0 and that number won't get any bigger. Tesla doesn't have much economic incentive to spend a lot of programming time on AP1.0. At some point, well before 8 years has passed, they will stand pat, except for bug fixes.

Based on the article it sounds like the computer can only handle so much input data and it may not be able to take advantage of 100% of the radar and camera power. Too bad for us. The only way around that is to write more efficient code and that's not happening unless someone writes some code for AP2.0 that also works for AP1.0. Not too likely.

On the plus side, the computer won't get slower with age like your desktop because nothing's changing.

Hope they're still in business 8 years from now.

 

[Garlan Garner]

When I started my voyage into Telsa I was excited for the software updates, because it meant I wasn't buying a car frozen in time.

But in part of the Enhanced AP announcement was the tidbit that the new control unit has "40x the processing power", and in September Elon Musk admitted to “almost reaching the limit of the hardware” (source). It isn't clear to me if Musk's quote refers to computational power or the AP hardware.

But still - are we going to find ourselves like iPhone owners, where software updates are technically available for download, but will bog down and become laggy since we're on outdated hardware? I don't know anyone with an 8 year old desktop computer or smartphone, is Tesla really going to be able to achieve the 8 year promise?

When Elon made that quote he was talking about exhausting the size and capacity of the current battery. That was the topic of conversation.
That is not to say that there are other parts of the cars that were also "reaching the limit of its hardware" also.

 

[Lesifass]

I don't know anyone with an 8 year old desktop computer or smartphone, is Tesla really going to be able to achieve the 8 year promise?

My desktop computer is now 7 years old (to be fair, I added a solid state drive like 4 years ago, and the GPU was changed as well in 2011 for bitcoin mining reasons) and it works much butter than most computers I know. Probably because I use the same operating system that is used in Teslas (Ubuntu).

So it's not like software automatically needs better hardware to perform flawless as time progresses. Developers just need to be aware of the available ressources and use them wisely. As I understand it, the AP 1.0 hardware is now almost fully utilized. The main Tesla screen is laggy like it always was.

Maybe they switch older cars to "maintenance mode" at some point in time, and only provide security updates going forward, because they no longer want to be constrained by that old hardware when developing new features. This is what Footer expects and I think that's reasonable. But providing unusably laggy user interfaces for older cars? I doubt it.

 

[Dborn]

They could offer CPU update for older cars. Changing out the centre screen is a deal but not that big a deal.

 

[bob_p]

The new AP 2.0 processor is for autopilot - not for handling the rest of the car's functions - and it's likely also to have Tegra processors similar to what's in the pre-AP 2.0 cars.

For non-AP functionality, the AP 2.0 Model S and X cars should be basically the same, and as Tesla makes improvements to non-AP functions, it shouldn't be too difficult to provide the update to the entire fleet.

Model 3 will introduce some new complications, if the console display is different (landscape instead of portrait) - but it's possible for that to be handled in software, if Tesla's software developer design the software properly - so that software can operate in either display mode.

The biggest issue will be the impact of AP 2.0 on AP 1.0. Since AP 1.0 doesn't have the dedicated AP processor, it is evidently implemented sharing the processor with other operations - so there's a limit in how much processing can be used for AP 1.0 without impacting other operations.

It's likely AP 1.0 capabilities will stabilize with the 8.1 release - achieving Tesla's goal of on ramp to off ramp for AP 1.0 - and after that, AP 1.0 owners should expect bug fixes and only minor feature updates.

 

[Gizmotoy]

I think the bigger concern is can Tesla afford to keep making improvements to old software. There are roughly 100,000 cars with AP1.0 and that number won't get any bigger. Tesla doesn't have much economic incentive to spend a lot of programming time on AP1.0. At some point, well before 8 years has passed, they will stand pat, except for bug fixes.

Not to depress you, but you should take a look at the "Version X.0 - For classic owners" threads. It should essentially provide confirmation of what you suspect to be true. We were promised a host of "7.1" fixes over a year ago that have never come. The entire car shifted to a flat UI, but the non-AP gauge cluster stayed in a completely mismatched shaded 3D. I gave up getting my parking sensors to work reliably because Tesla says they're discontinued, not getting any fixes, and there's nothing more they can do to make them work. I've mostly gotten used to the car's size and don't really need them anymore.

Once your hardware is not the same as what's in the latest shipping vehicle, Tesla's interest in fixing broken software things related to that hardware drops off sharply.

 

[supratachophobia]

When I started my voyage into Telsa I was excited for the software updates, because it meant I wasn't buying a car frozen in time.

But in part of the Enhanced AP announcement was the tidbit that the new control unit has "40x the processing power", and in September Elon Musk admitted to “almost reaching the limit of the hardware” (source). It isn't clear to me if Musk's quote refers to computational power or the AP hardware.

But still - are we going to find ourselves like iPhone owners, where software updates are technically available for download, but will bog down and become laggy since we're on outdated hardware? I don't know anyone with an 8 year old desktop computer or smartphone, is Tesla really going to be able to achieve the 8 year promise?

At some point with AP 1.0, the feature set will be the feature set. Honestly, I don't see it going much past what is does now, and that's ok. It's the car we paid form (with the exception of the car picking you up at the door to someplace, which Elon inferred would be the case).

And as far as the MCU goes. We only need it to do a select number of things. Sure it could be less laggy, but I can't see any reason why we would ask it to do more than what it already does with regards to functionality. Even if you implemented all 150+ 7.1 suggestions that didn't require hardware, it's overall functionality and therefore load on hardware wouldn't be that much more. The biggest thing I can see affecting performance would be including POI and trip stops into a NAV route. I'm sure it could do it, but it might get even more stuttery doing so.

All that to say, AP 1.0 is done. But bug fixes and feature requests to current app suite have no reason to be over.

 

[bob_p]

Now that Tesla has the hardware out for AP 2.0, the biggest missing piece is the software.

8.0 and all of their previous major releases does not inspire a lot of confidence that Tesla knows how to develop quality software and test it thoroughly enough to ensure no major bugs get into the releases.

Tesla really needs to take software quality much more seriously - because if they can't get the media player to work correctly, would you really trust the car to be driving itself (even today in "summons" mode???).

 

[Petra]

Tesla really needs to take software quality much more seriously - because if they can't get the media player to work correctly, would you really trust the car to be driving itself (even today in "summons" mode???).

To be fair to Tesla, they appear to do fine with the safety critical stuff... The pattern seems more like Tesla doing fine with complex or challenging software, while half-assing some of the simple stuff.

 

[shokunin]

The biggest issue will be the impact of AP 2.0 on AP 1.0. Since AP 1.0 doesn't have the dedicated AP processor, it is evidently implemented sharing the processor with other operations - so there's a limit in how much processing can be used for AP 1.0 without impacting other operations.

AP1.0 has it's own dedicated AP chip, Mobileye EyeQ3. Tesla's code runs on the chip for the AP 1.0 functions.

 

[woof]

it works much butter than most computers I know

Milk it for all it's worth!

 

[David99]

It is already happening. My classic S 85 was never really fast in terms of the UI and touch screen. Now with 8.0 the dash screen has gotten sow and sometimes unresponsive. It's like the frame rate drops and you see it lagging. In the last 2 weeks it completely froze 4 times. So it's already happening to cars built less than 3 years ago. Tesla is very aggressive about development and new features. They really don't care much about the old cars on the road. No new features are retrofittable to older cars, they even discourage battery upgrades which was one of the key points for design of the car.

 

[S4WRXTTCS]

The biggest issue will be the impact of AP 2.0 on AP 1.0. Since AP 1.0 doesn't have the dedicated AP processor, it is evidently implemented sharing the processor with other operations - so there's a limit in how much processing can be used for AP 1.0 without impacting other operations..

On AP 1.0 the bulk of the processing is done on the MobileEye processor. That is the AP Processor.
On AP 2.0 the bulk of the processing done on the NVidia Drive PX2

For the infotainment computer we haven't seen any confirmation on what this is. They were supposed to upgrade this to an NVidia TK1/TX1 platform, but I don't know when this will take place. When people start receiving AP 2.0 cars we can tell whether this processor change has taken place. I think it's absolutely critical for this processor to be upgraded since I don't believe the previous solution had the power to really offer any major upgradability.

 

[trils0n]

It is already happening. My classic S 85 was never really fast in terms of the UI and touch screen. Now with 8.0 the dash screen has gotten sow and sometimes unresponsive. It's like the frame rate drops and you see it lagging.

Weird, for my classic P85, 8.0 is the fastest version I recall on my car, including the version (4.x ?) that was on that car when I took delivery. Always bugged my how laggy the Controls button was, but now it opens nearly instantly. Never seen any lag on the instrument cluster. Wonder what accounts for the difference?

 

[Gig103]

On AP 1.0 the bulk of the processing is done on the MobileEye processor. That is the AP Processor.
On AP 2.0 the bulk of the processing done on the NVidia Drive PX2

For the infotainment computer we haven't seen any confirmation on what this is. They were supposed to upgrade this to an NVidia TK1/TX1 platform, but I don't know when this will take place. When people start receiving AP 2.0 cars we can tell whether this processor change has taken place. I think it's absolutely critical for this processor to be upgraded since I don't believe the previous solution had the power to really offer any major upgradability.

I did not know the AP1 had a dedicated processor. That makes me feel somewhat better.

 

[omarsultan]

Weird, for my classic P85, 8.0 is the fastest version I recall on my car,

+1 8.x seems faster than 7.x

 

[S4WRXTTCS]

+1 8.x seems faster than 7.x

It's definitely flatter.

But, there is a technical reason why it is faster. In 8.0 they cut down on the amount of logging/reporting the linux kernel does that runs on the infotainment cpu. Basically they told the kernel to shut the hell up, and this saves cpu cycles for other things.

Disclaimer - I'm recalling this from some techno mumble jumble that Ingineer said, and I make no claims that I remembered the technical details exactly or that I'm using the correct linux speak.

 

[Roger_wilco]

Apple has the best record for bringing updates to every possible device they sold, I would be greatly relaxed if Tesla could let development of operating system to apple's hands.
In other scenario, we likely to survive in a samsung-like environment where firmware updates quickly forgotten, in a "New model every year" world of consumer electronics.
If such big companies expect loyalty from their customers, they should show the same to their former products, unless they are cheap-enough to replace every other year.

 

[⚡️ELECTROMAN⚡️]

I have two 8 year old PCs running Vista that still work great. I have one six year old and two five year old iPads that are barely usable for surfing the internet. And they have been that way for a while now. Lets keep Apple far away from Tesla, please. Apple quit supporting my iPad 1 at iOS 5.1.1, less than two years after I bought it.