New MCU computer in AP2.0 cars?

[KyleDay]

Now that AP2.0 cars are starting to be delivered, can anyone confirm if the MCU (the guts that controls the media center) has been updated as part of the refresh?

@xberg has hinted that an MCU computer refresh is imminent and I'd like to know if we have any way of knowing if "Hardware 2.0" cars have it yet.

How would one confirm? Is there a way to tell what hardware is in the MCU?

 

[eyespii]

I'd love to know the answer to this as well!

 

[KyleDay]

Bump

 

[bswn1]

There's no evidence to support this just yet.

 

[S4WRXTTCS]

There's no evidence to support this just yet.

There is also no evidence to say it hasn't been updated either.

In fact I'm not sure when it was last benchmarked. The Tesla motors forums has a thread on it where people were benchmarking it through the browser, but it hasn't been updated since the V6.X firmware.

 

[lunitiks]

I'd suspect Elon would have mentioned this in his comments during the press conference following the AP2 reveal.

He didn't. In fact he said that (paraphrasing) the new supercomputer had nothing to do with the infotainment system.

My guess is that we'll see an MCU refresh closer to the M3 reveal.

 

[Vitold]

To test the speed, someone with AP2.0 please go to:
SunSpider 1.0.2 JavaScript Benchmark (sunspider-1.0.2 test suite - In Progress...)

Results for X and S:
X vs. S (Infotainment Screen Resolution)

 

[enzo]

Model S, AP2 hw.
Certainly room for improvement; my phone does 3x better. I don't think JS performance is an accurate bench of the CPU, it seems to be intentionally limited.

MS AP2 hw

• enzo
• Nov 27, 2016

 

[Ryan MF]

Back in the day we benchmarked cars by putting them on the dyno. Nowadays we are more interested in the performance of the processor so we run javascript benchmarks on the MCU and compare it to our phones. Who would have thought?

 

[mblakele]

my phone does 3x better. I don't think JS performance is an accurate bench of the CPU, it seems to be intentionally limited.

I agree that JS performance isn't a great comparison for overall performance — even though I'm not sure about "intentionally limited". JavaScript implementations are (mostly) single-threaded, so they won't make use of multiple CPU cores. Your phone probably has multiple cores. So does the Tesla MCU, though with a much older design. But this benchmark will only run on one core on each, leaving the others mostly idle. Loading real web pages, the browser would run JavaScript and HTML rendering in parallel, whenever it can. Also browser implementations have changed a lot over the years, and Tesla's old QtCarBrowser with WebKit 534.34 is based on code that's now over five years old.

In practice I'd guess that your phone feels much faster than the Tesla MCU, more than the 3x suggested by SunSpider.

 

[KyleDay]

Sorry for my ignorance, but does it appear that the AP 2.0 results from above indicate the same MCU internals?

 

[AWDtsla]

Model S, AP2 hw.
Certainly room for improvement; my phone does 3x better. I don't think JS performance is an accurate bench of the CPU, it seems to be intentionally limited.

MS AP2 hw

• enzo
• Nov 27, 2016

My phone does 17 times better. I don't think they've changed a thing, and I don't think it's intentionally limited. It just has a processor from 5-6 years ago in it.

 

[AWDtsla]

In practice I'd guess that your phone feels much faster than the Tesla MCU, more than the 3x suggested by SunSpider.

In practice the browser is pretty much unusable. You only use it as a party trick, or a super simple page dedicated for viewing on the MCU.

 

[lunitiks]

I think you're right AWDtsla. The AP2.0-ECU does not rely on the infotainment system. It's directly wired through CAN to the power steering, the brakes, the power train etc. The AP2.0-ECU does all the calculations based on the sensor input and outputs all the controls.

Some guy in here however pointed out that ye old 17" might have trouble with the HD mapping. Im not sure about this. But what the car really needs to do, is to upload it's driver experience to the mothership (the main training brain), and when it's not uploading it needs to be storing all this data somewhere. I dont think the MCU comes in here..

 

[calisnow]

So current AP 2.0 Teslas have the self driving neural network running on hardware that does 12 trillion operations per second but the MCU still has not been updated after several years to load web pages at a semi decent speed? Good grief.

 

[lunitiks]

It's Tesla The car keeps improving, not all at once, but baby steps

 

[3s-a-charm]

I noticed the last two Model X vehicles I drove the screen is noticeably improved for display compared to my P85D (late 2014). More contrast and seemed sharper.

Here's hoping the MCU speed improves. It's still pretty good, honestly, for most basic functions but I can see a few areas for speed improvements. Especially now that the maps in v8 stay on top with the auto-hide icons. If you want to quickly access the media or calendar icons there is a bit of a delay while the un-hide activates.

Seems like a super simple upgrade for Tesla to make (improved MCU) - can't imagine what is holding them back from an upgrade here.

 

[jaguar36]

In practice the browser is pretty much unusable. You only use it as a party trick, or a super simple page dedicated for viewing on the MCU.

I disagree, I use the browser all the time for checking the weather, finding food, or checking store hours.

 

[bob_p]

The Tegra processor should be fast enough to provide reasonable performance for the apps running today.

Though, doesn't AP 1.0 add some load to the MCU to handle the AP functions - something that AP 2.0 pushes over to the new Drive PX2?

While adding more processing power might help with performance, if the software isn't designed well, even a faster processor may not provide much improvement in the long run.

 

[lunitiks]

Can't really see what load the AP1.0 suit brings to the MCU, except maybe parking sensor input. (For visualization when parking.) The AP1.0 camera has its chip running hot above your head bhnd rear view camera, feeding its input to the Pektron car ECU which communicates with the steering and driving controls. I think the same is true with the Bosch forward radar.

I think the new GPS in AP2.0 cars might be one of the only new hardwares that feeds more detailed / high res data to the MCU than on the old cars.

But I cant imagine Tesla havent been aware of the old MCUs capabilities when they put the new suit in the cars