And by faster you mean instead of being a 6 year old android tablet chip it’s now got the compute power of a netbook.
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Tesla infotainment system upgradeable from MCU1 to MCU2
- Thread starter MurrayJimW
- Start date
Some here just do not understand the chaos that is a developing company, especially one that is doing things which have never been done before!
Elon's 'broken promises'? He was assured by engineers of timelines. But software is invariably 3 times harder and takes 3 times longer than expected. Elon said FSD for last year? He has moved mountains to get MCU3 designed and built, an honest and bona-fide groundbreaking piece of engineering, all while trying to keep the M3 program from flying to pieces and tightening up operations to conserve scarce capital and keep the company alive.
Elon said he wouldn't do a capital raise until now because it imposes financial discipline? While the ninnies say that shouldn't be necessary and financial discipline should happen without that? They just have no idea how things actually work in a large organization. Elon says FSD this year, with a trip across the country while everyone scoffs? They do not realize why he would say that -- to excite the non-owning public, but also importantly to impose a public deadline on his developers... do you realize that any software project without milestones will go on and on forever and ever? Do you know how many people he's fired to try and get the train moving as fast as you people want? And this is the reward for the sacrifices to peoples' lives, to try and make you happy? Paid $100k for your car? That was your decision and fault.
Whinge, whinge, whinge. Where would you be without Tesla, huh? Driving an oil-burner and spewing poison into the only air we have, and sending your money to Saudi Arabia. I have an AP1... and the MCU, while not lightning fast, is still more advanced than any other car out there. (Then again, I've avoided v9) No, it is not an MCU 2.0, 2.5, or 3.0... If I really had to have one of those I would not expect to do anything but buy another car. It is just a reality that developments must march on and maybe sometimes leave us behind. That is how it has always been everywhere, so buy a newer car or shut up because your SoCal is showing.
Oh go ahead and disagree. That is lots easier than giving a cogent response.
Elon's 'broken promises'? He was assured by engineers of timelines. But software is invariably 3 times harder and takes 3 times longer than expected. Elon said FSD for last year? He has moved mountains to get MCU3 designed and built, an honest and bona-fide groundbreaking piece of engineering, all while trying to keep the M3 program from flying to pieces and tightening up operations to conserve scarce capital and keep the company alive.
Elon said he wouldn't do a capital raise until now because it imposes financial discipline? While the ninnies say that shouldn't be necessary and financial discipline should happen without that? They just have no idea how things actually work in a large organization. Elon says FSD this year, with a trip across the country while everyone scoffs? They do not realize why he would say that -- to excite the non-owning public, but also importantly to impose a public deadline on his developers... do you realize that any software project without milestones will go on and on forever and ever? Do you know how many people he's fired to try and get the train moving as fast as you people want? And this is the reward for the sacrifices to peoples' lives, to try and make you happy? Paid $100k for your car? That was your decision and fault.
Whinge, whinge, whinge. Where would you be without Tesla, huh? Driving an oil-burner and spewing poison into the only air we have, and sending your money to Saudi Arabia. I have an AP1... and the MCU, while not lightning fast, is still more advanced than any other car out there. (Then again, I've avoided v9) No, it is not an MCU 2.0, 2.5, or 3.0... If I really had to have one of those I would not expect to do anything but buy another car. It is just a reality that developments must march on and maybe sometimes leave us behind. That is how it has always been everywhere, so buy a newer car or shut up because your SoCal is showing.
Oh go ahead and disagree. That is lots easier than giving a cogent response.
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TaoJones
Beyond Driven
Hmm yes, Ok you have convinced me. The actual facts I've stated are completely wrong.
Remember, facts are of no use in politics. Someone should tell you that politics, is not the same as science. Make. Your. Choice.
It’s not about politics. fundamentally the MCU is not super exciting.Hmm yes, Ok you have convinced me. The actual facts I've stated are completely wrong.
Someone should tell you that politics, is not the same as science.
They picked the Tegra 3 and 4 long after everyone else had switched to the Tegra K1 and newer ARM SoCs from qualcomm that have EL3 support to give you hypervisor isolation for crap like streaming media forcing a reboot and causing you to lose Autopilot nav data.
And then when it’s time to redesign they picked one of the cheapest and lowest end Intel Atom SoCs developed by a remedial remote branch of Intel.
*shrug* I will pompously advocate for Karpathy, AP2, and other aspects of Tesla. But in terms of infotainment hardware or software? Nah. It’s lackluster at best.
What makes you think they are still making new MCU1s? My guess is that their only stock of MCU1s is ones that they have refurbished by replacing the eMMC in the failed ones that they replace... For every one they replace they get one to refurbish, i.e. a never ending supply. (Unless it is an out of warranty replacement and the owner demands to keep his failed MCU.)
It is about politics when it's not about facts, and you made clear your disdain of facts.
And what almost no one knows is that the Tesla CID is not an off-the-shelf nVidia card. It's an nVidia VCM reference design which was modified specifically for Tesla by nVidia. By all rights it appears identical to a Qseven-standard design, but the edge connector power is on the wrong end, and data lines are moved around. No one is saying this was a technical improvement, but one made to avert easy upgradeability by users and keep control of the system.
What does this mean? That there was lead-time for the redesign, which put this card behind current releases at the time, and also accounts for why no K or X follow-on was made as lessons were learned.
The Atom choice was made based on what developers thought could be done with software at the time. It did not work out and they do not work there anymore. Lessons were learned, sacrifices were made. It is work in progress, as is any New Science.
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Just to clarify: I’m not saying that there’s super easy drop in replacements for the hardware. They definitely aren’t taking off the shelf board designs and if they are to spin it, it should be worth it. I said that earlier too — if they rev these designs it should be worth doing so.
I have “disdain” for these facts because I’ve spent 15+ years of 80 hour work weeks designing and bringing up these kinds of platforms on a wide variety of architectures and the work I’m seeing them produce fails to impress me.
I’ve never gone through a product cycle and was like “gee wow I’m happy with every choice made”. But maybe the marketing team spins that to be a technological breakthrough but from a technical standpoint, no, the Tesla MCUs get the job done but I’m not going to glorify them to any extent.
Loco_Nomad
Member
does 2014 MS has MCU1 or pre MCU1 lol, are MCU2s much better, what are pros of MCU2 if installed in pre facelift car? and I guess the price?
Early MCU1 cars had 3G mobile data and as I understand it, first came with a lower resolution instrument cluster (IC). Later MCUs (think of them as MCU1.1) had 4G\LTE mobile data. At some point the IC resolution increased. MCU2 has a significantly faster processor AND added Bluetooth (phone) key ability (which has not been enabled on the S/X) and added newer, higher speed wifi (802.11ac) which is enabled. The latter two were accompanied by new wiring in the harness, so possibly the only benefit of a retrofit is processor speed, although some think the new wifi would have some benefits piggybacking on the old antenna.
One drawback of the new MCU2 is MCU2 IC is just a display, so if the MCU2 fails, the IC fails. Most speculate that an MCU2 retrofit would require an IC retrofit as well as a tuner/radio retrofit.
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KArnold
Active Member
Agree. I drank the kool-aid. In my ignorance of believing the lies I was duped. It's probably the worst financial decision I've made. I regret it. Things will be made right.
But fool me once...
From a performance perspective it is clear that the MCU1 sucks compared to MCU2. But from a functional perspective, what features does the MCU2 have that the MCU1 does not?
And I don’t mean to-be features, but as is 2019.12.1...
MCU2 have chromium browser? What else? More Atari games?
I complete list/spreadsheet comparison would be awesome, both showing the difference in hardware specks but also features! But for my part, at this point I am mostly wondering about the features.
And I don’t mean to-be features, but as is 2019.12.1...
MCU2 have chromium browser? What else? More Atari games?
I complete list/spreadsheet comparison would be awesome, both showing the difference in hardware specks but also features! But for my part, at this point I am mostly wondering about the features.
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A better browser is potentially a big deal, as without a functional App Store, the browser is the window into the world which we can extend the functions of the car.
For example, someone made a web site which would allow Spotify to sort of work. Additional capabilities like that can follow in the future. But only if you have MCU2
whitex
Well-Known Member
It's not "just a CPU", it's a System On Chip. Replacing it would be like moving from AMD based laptop to Intel based one, except standard Linux distro doesn't support such new configuration, so all new drivers, all new optimization, and MOST IMPORTANTLY, yet another MCU to test updates on, times the number of configurations MCU1 had, so if we only consider MCU1+AP1, MCU1+AP2, MCU1+AP2.5, and in the future MCU1+AP3 (AP2 cars with MCU which paid for FSD, therefore are owed an upgrade). So, making an upgrade to MCU1 would add at least 4 configurations to test new software releases on. Tesla already has enough problems with the myriad of configurations they are obligated to support, they don't want to make the problem worse.
So, as much as I it would be nice to upgrade, I think it's very unlikely, even though Elon tweeted otherwise.
Thanks, I forgot the SOC aspect. I think the post to which I was replying was assuming there was a faster, but otherwise identical SOC to upgrade to. The point about further combinational explosion of configurations is even stronger, as you (correctly) point out. I wish there was a "like"-style button for "sadly nodding my head in agreement".
Bruce.
whitex
Well-Known Member
So what you're saying is if someone was naive enough to buy stuff from Elon based on his word, it's their own fault for not getting what they paid for. I guess you could say the same about anyone who gave money to Bernie Madoff, or invested their retirements in any funds which would give Bernie your money. They all should have known better, so it's their own fault, right?
whitex
Well-Known Member
Usually the next generation SoC will come with next generation peripherals (graphics, network, etc) and likely new CPU's, so all drivers, power management, etc is new. As @rooter mentioned on this thread, Tesla modified the standard VCM module, and probably also customized their own software, so any upgrades would require a lot of work from Tesla. Had they used the module "as is" and with manufacturer provided firmware (OS+drivers), they could probably try going to the next gen module and just re-validate the applications. It seems they customized mostly to make it incompatible. In the end, and this is just my personal opinion, it seems Elon had no experience shipping hardware, and had never realized the support burned being self-imposed on a company by releasing ever changing hardware platforms for a product which has a 12+ year lifecycle. There is a reason why other companies don't release new and improved hardware every 2 weeks (something Elon was once proud of) - it creates a service and support nightmare. In Elon's defence, he is pioneering internet connected IoT embedded products with 12+ years of expected lifetime. The only internet connected software with that kind of support to date has been Microsoft Windows, though even Microsoft is trying to cut things off a decade later today. Maybe the problem is that rapid prototyping on actual product and selling products with long term support just doesn't mix.
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The Spotify app you referred to is working just fine on my MCU1 2016 MS.
I am not taking about the Tesla built in Spotify that EU customers get. I am talking the site that uses BT to sync with your phone to use the Tesla screen as a Spotify remote. Did it actually work with your MCU1 browser? I can’t even get that to load google search.
