MCU2 and HW3 terminology?

[hamoneaster]

What does MCU2 and HW3 mean? I see it everywhere but I'm not sure what that means. What do the 2020 models have compared to the 2021 refresh and Plaids?

 

[PCMc]

MCU2 refers to the generation of the processor that is used for the main center display.

MCU1 was an NVIDIA Tegra processor. MCU2 is the Intel Atom processor.

HW3 refers to the hardware set used for the autopilot / self-driving system. Gets into a combination of both the generation of the cameras and also the microprocessor that is used.

Do a little googling and you can find various articles which will give you references to when each were introduced and the differences between models.

Both a 2020 Model S and a newest Palladium (the platform name for the latest Model S) would have hardware that is capable for FSD, etc.

 

[Tam]

...What do the 2020 models have compared to the 2021 refresh and Plaids?

I'd like to add that the refreshed 2021 S/X Palladium production has MCU3 that has AMD Zen 1+ Processor, Ryzen APU, and discrete Navi 23 GPU.

Refreshed 2019 and 2020 S/X production is called "Raven".