Next gen AP After HW3

[socal_suburbanit]

With all the hype around HW3 it was interesting to hear them discuss in today’s investor event the next gen chip which will be around 3x more powerful than HW3 (aka the FSD chip) and out in around two years from now.
With all the talk about how HW3 is barely ticking what will they use all that extra compute power for?
-Elon said that they’ve had multiple discussions on additional sensors and always decide current suite does not need additions so it isn’t for that.
-Elon has said they get full redundancy and 2000 frames per second of analysis with HW3 so that seems like more than enough for street driving.

Just faster/better reaction times?
Perhaps sharing data with other cars in real-time?
Moving additional software into ASICS?
Or just general future proofing?

Hmmmm.

 

[Knightshade]

More 9s on the 99.999% thing.

And possibly more jurisdictions allowing FSD with higher safety margins like that.

(like, one place might be fine if it's 5x safer than humans- another country might require 10x or something)


That- or they realize like with HW2.x- that they need more/bigger NNs again- then everyone with FSD gets free HW4

 

[ngogas]

There will always. S better technology. Just enjoy what you have now I guess. Lol

 

[Krash]

In the unlikely case that Tesla doesn't need the additional cycles for current functions and Tesla runs out of new function ideas, they can slow the new hardware down to use less power and last longer.

 

[Swampgator]

I think it's all about power consumption.

 

[PhatCat]

I think it's all about power consumption.

This. HW3 requires more power than current chipset.

 

[Knightshade]

This. HW3 requires more power than current chipset.

But proportionally it uses much less for the amount of work it's doing.

 

[ewoodrick]

I think it's all about power consumption.

I'll agree with power consumption and add price. There may be some future-proofing added as well. It seems as if their turn-around time may be a little longer than desirable.

 

[Leafdriver333]

Waymo has working FSD.
I wonder why Tesla doesn't.

 

[Knightshade]

Waymo has working FSD. .

In the level 5 sense? No, they don't.

They have a level 4 system that kinda works almost all the time, in one part of one town in Arizona specifically, as long as they keep their high res mapping up to date and nobody changes anything between updates.

 

[ebmcs03]

If Waymo is L4 what is Tesla? L2 still?

With HW3 will it be L4?

 

[Swampgator]

If Waymo is L4 what is Tesla? L2 still?

With HW3 will it be L4?

The real question is what is Waymos plan to get to level 5?
Tesla has a clear plan and looks to be able to achieve level 4 by end of this year, and level 5 next year.
The Waymo approach does not scale to level 5.

 

[CameronB]

I'll agree with power consumption and add price. There may be some future-proofing added as well. It seems as if their turn-around time may be a little longer than desirable.

I agree with this assessment. Likely reduced power consumption and lower costs. But yeah, it will also be 3X more powerful because by then (2+ years) they will likely have new NNs that don't exist now that will push HW3 much harder and could benefit from having additional 'overhead'.

 

[M109Rider]

I agree with this assessment. Likely reduced power consumption and lower costs. But yeah, it will also be 3X more powerful because by then (2+ years) they will likely have new NNs that don't exist now that will push HW3 much harder and could benefit from having additional 'overhead'.

They also discussed new battery tech that would bring far more longevity to the batteries. Twice the longevity was what he said.
It may also have more range by the , making the next gen hardware power consumption a non issue then, but would now.

 

[Lunares]

Biggest thing is price.

Tesla is forecasting at least 1M cars per year (average) from 2020 to 2030. So that's 10M cars total.

Cutting the price of their hardware by $10/unit means they save $100M.

 

[Knightshade]

If Waymo is L4 what is Tesla? L2 still?

Yes, because unlike Waymo, you can actually purchase Teslas cars

Waymo has no product at all to sell you. They'll just take you for a robotaxi ride in one specific town in AZ as a nice tech demo.


Nobody sells anything higher than an L2 car in the US (and won't until regulations shape up considerably)

With HW3 will it be L4?

L5 is the target. They won't be able to turn that on until again- regulations make that practical to do.

Based on what Elon stated yesterday the car will be "capable" of at least L3/L4 (possibly L5) by Q2 next year, though he doesn't expect approval to turn any part of that on until nearer end of 2020.


Personally I think that's....optimistic... but I'd be perfectly happy if they can just deliver L3/L4 on highways by sometime next year since that'd cover 95% of my driving anyway.

 

[CameronB]

They also discussed new battery tech that would bring far more longevity to the batteries. Twice the longevity was what he said.
It may also have more range by the , making the next gen hardware power consumption a non issue then, but would now.

That's fair. If I had to handicap things, I'd guess that price is the more important of the two, but that they also want to bring down the power consumption. Not only below HW3, but maybe below HW2 levels as well. Every little bit helps.

Plus, that's how chip advancement generally works. With few exceptions, every generation of chips seems to feature lower power consumption than the previous one whether that CPU is in your PC/laptop or mobile phone. So I'd expect it will continue to be the same for car processors. Given that HW3 is Tesla's first go at making their own "APU" it ended up using a little more power than Nvidia's (lower performing) chips. Nvidia has been making and improving chips for a long time. Tesla's goals for HW3 seemed to be: 1) Plugin replacement for HW2 (therefore restrictions on overall size, thermal envelope and connector compatibility), 2) performance over power consumption concerns if one of them had to be compromised, 3) costs to be approximately the same as Nvidia SoC.

With all three of these goals met, their first generation HW3 is basically what we see: a system that is much faster than what they were sourcing from Nvidia but that uses a little more power but costs roughly (could be a little less, maybe a little more) the same.

With their HW4 they will undoubtedly have different goals. Price being significantly lower than either HW2 or HW3 will likely be one of them. And while maybe less important, I'd still guess getting power consumption levels to at or below HW2 (Nvidia) will be another goal. But I guess we will see in 2-3 years