Tesla, TSLA & the Investment World: the Perpetual Investors' Roundtable

[heltok]

Pierre (TSLA analyst) claims DOJO uses Nvidia chips

View attachment 578411

I am a bit skeptical, but then it is a lot about semantics. Elon said Dojo was FPGA on his tweet.

Dojo will have two components that both are very important.

1. Generate a huge well annotated dataset
2. Train a neural network on the annotated dataset

1. Will require vasts amount of video processing and use neural networks for inference. The advantage of the 4D labelling is that you can use future data to label current timestep, for example use the side camera 4s into the future to label where the lane marking 100m in front of the car is in 3D space. You can also predict where an occluded car is based on where the radar said it was 1s ago and where it will be in 1s according to the cameras. Here some form of Kalman filter will be useful in combination with the neural network predictions. Also some for of Human labelling and likely some form of AI to predict how a human would label to help the labellers. I think designing this system is the 140+ IQ problem that I look forward to hearing the answer to in a few years and this is where the competition will struggle because there are not enough Karpathys and machine learning jedi engineers out there...

Thus 1 will require a mix of compute, a lot will be very GPU friendly and some will be pure HW3-like inference friendly, but on the server side and no need for real time batch size of one. The good news is that this is very parallelizable and it would be pretty easy to just let AWS do it for you, but maybe they would save money by using their own neural engine chips for it at some point.

2. Will require very large memory or some form of distribution, see for example this video at 6.14:

Imo it seems likely that it somewhere here is where the need for FGPA and extreme bandwidth comes in.

Imo Dojo is all about reducing the cost to run a build of any new code/dataset changes. Maybe they will reduce build time a bit also, but that could probably also have been achieved by throwing more money into the cloud.

I like the last video by GeoHotz where he says that using the cloud is a crutch, it’s better to build your own system as you learn to be more efficient:
Around 1.30.00 into the video he talks about their cluster

(Fwiw it seems Elon has seen at least parts of this video as he commented on a clip of it and he previously offered Hotz millions to work for Tesla).

 

[Criscmt]

So how much extra would it cost to buy PUTS as some SP insurance for those years?

Also, have you considered hiring the services of a professional options trader? A solid strategy that gives you peace of mind is literally worth its weight in nickel.

Good luck, and congrats on retirement.

Cheers!

How/Where to find such advisers?
Does calling Brokerages like ETrade, Fidelity help get you to one of these advisers?

 

[Green Pete]

How/Where to find such advisers?
Does calling Brokerages like ETrade, Fidelity help get you to one of these advisers?

I don't know if that will get you options trading advisors, but its been my experience that anyone of that nature I show my portfolio to they tend to look very concerned, and I ignore them and decide I don't want their services and at least up till now I have been very happy with that choice.

 

[Prunesquallor]

Anyone know the significance of a Snakeophone?

 

[Green Pete]

Anyone know the significance of a Snakeophone?
View attachment 578519

 

[Cobbler]

I am seeing ghosts...
Elon tweet

SerPent
SaxoPhone

S&P announcement today

 

[Green Pete]

I am seeing ghosts...
Elon tweet

SerPent
SaxoPhone

S&P announcement today

Snake jazz is an episode of rick and morty where among other things they create a race of sentient snakes that form a society on another planet, which then fight off doomsday from AI.

The tweet came in when he was tweeting about democracy and settling mars.

Theres a saying in medicine. When you hear hoofbeats think horses, not zebra.

 

[JBRR]

Panasonic to invest $100m in EV battery plant in US for Tesla

The investment will be made in Gigafactory 1, a battery plant in the U.S. state of Nevada with 13 production lines. Panasonic will add another line, increasing capacity by 10% to 39 gigawatt-hours per year.

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Panasonic is also upgrading the batteries being produced at Gigafactory, raising each battery's storage capacity by 5%, starting in September.

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With annual production capacity set to exceed 1 million vehicles next year, the capacity for battery production is also likely to increase, Panasonic officials say.

Bit more context from today.

 

[RobStark]

This is definitely useful to track, but the ex-Audi executive in one of @avoigt 's recent interviews blamed the lack of e-tron sales on the supply chain, which I don't buy at all. I think they had plenty more capacity in the supply chain, but almost nobody wants that car. Otherwise why has it been discounted so much...

Why does Tesla keep cutting prices?

European E-tron sales seem to be fine. American sales are a black hole now with no one reporting monthly or quarterly BEV sales except occasionally when they want to tout very good news.

In China we know the Top 20 PEV Models but those are all domestically produced including BMW 530Le PHEV and VW Passat PHEV. The Etron is not made in China and not in Top 20

 

[Tslynk67]

This seems positive and might help a bit with the macros...

And whatever happened to that stimulus bill they were discussing a few weeks back? Thought that was "urgent"?

U.S. and China to hold trade talks in the coming days, Chinese commerce ministry says

 

[Oveeus]

Why does Tesla keep cutting prices?

European E-tron sales seem to be fine. American sales are a black hole now with no one reporting monthly or quarterly BEV sales except occasionally when they want to tout very good news.

In China we know the Top 20 PEV Models but those are all domestically produced including BMW 530Le PHEV and VW Passat PHEV. The Etron is not made in China and not in Top 20

I see the continuos price cutting as a way to not only make progress on Tesla's mission, but also to make the market continue to improve. The continue improvement among competitors would not only benefit the EV as a whole, but Tesla in particular as it is seen as the leader in the market.

As more people become aware that EV are no longer in the crappy stage decade ago, this can potentially lead to more demand on Tesla's products.

And Tesla is in a stage where it's making exponential growth. It needs volume, not margin. Only with enough scale can Tesla achieve its mission, and only with enough scale, it can justify all the Giga/Tera factory in progress/planning.

 

[Tslynk67]

I am seeing ghosts...
Elon tweet

SerPent
SaxoPhone

S&P announcement today

Not sure it's allowed today, due to the split timing, and all that, but it's a damn good theory and a great test of Tweet interpretation

 

[T@oo]

Why does Tesla keep cutting prices?

European E-tron sales seem to be fine. American sales are a black hole now with no one reporting monthly or quarterly BEV sales except occasionally when they want to tout very good news.

In China we know the Top 20 PEV Models but those are all domestically produced including BMW 530Le PHEV and VW Passat PHEV. The Etron is not made in China and not in Top 20

Stop taking European numbers for granted from German OEMs. Those numbers are greatly inflated. All cars delivered to dealers and registered by THEM are counted. It doesn't mean they have a customer for it. Want an (brand new) etron for 23% less... here you go. And thats no unicorn.

Oh and btw, I like you input Rob. But a few I thinks or I believes or IMOs in your posts would make them ... more likeable.

 

[heltok]

Anyone know the significance of a Snakeophone?
View attachment 578519

Like charming a snake with a flute:

 

[UnknownSoldier]

And whatever happened to that stimulus bill they were discussing a few weeks back? Thought that was "urgent"?

The Democrats overplayed their hand as usual and thought if the economy collapsed enough and Americans suffered enough they could force the Republicans to the table and dictate terms for their $3 trillion second stimulus bill. The Republicans offered a $1 trillion bill and decided they would just wait the Democrats out with their standard stalling tactics. Unfortunately for the Democrats, the economy has been busy recovering all this time and jobless claims are falling, the stock market has returned to all-time highs, Amazon and Target and Walmart are reporting record sales, and most states have at least partially reopened many businesses including restaurants.

The stimulus bill isn't nearly as urgent now as it was 3 months ago, and continued stalling tactics are making it less urgent every single day that passes. Now the Congress is in recess so nothing will continue to happen for a few weeks, during which time the recovery will continue. The Democrats have a long history of being outmaneuvered by the Republicans simply by the Republicans doing nothing, and for some reason they never seem to learn how to avoid being stalled until their original goal was rendered irrelevant after decades of this bog standard political tactic.

 

[printf42]

OT:
My doubts and argument stands. In general, when you say use FPGA to simulate something, it usually means you are building a custom chip. Else you won’t use the word “simulate”, you would call your FPGA an “accelerator” as Microsoft and some others did in the past.

And if Tesla is building a custom training chip, it won’t be a supplement to GPUs, I doubt it would even need an x86 CPU, they would likely have some ARM cores in it and be very self-contained.

I know this won’t be a good news for any Nvidia investors, hence they would try to muddy the water before its clear what Tesla is doing.

Also there is something fishy about the reported new chip order from TSMC.
It has been widely reported as HW4, but it might not be so, it might actually be the Dojo chip we are speculating.

The news article Ferragu replied to mentioned they use some kind of new “system on wafer” technique to directly build the whole system on wafers without base plate or PCB, then glue it to heat sinks.
A 12 inch wafers only yields 25 systems, and its 7nm.
That’s far too big of an area for next gen FSD computer. Also the order is for only 2000 waffles, so only 50k systems tops.
The news clearly referred to the chip as an HPC chip, not sure why people insist it would be the FSD computer for cars but not for backend data centers.
It also mentioned the chip was jointly designed by Broadcom and Tesla, to me that immediately sounds like the high speed switch fabric you would need for parallel training. I don’t remember HW3 was jointly developed with them, anyone heard anything different?

From what we heard(maybe not supposed to though) from autonomous day, HW4 would be more about iterating HW3 and make it cheaper and faster, I would expect lower costs and energy consumption, also performance improvements within 2x-10x, not the kind of big revolution if the new chip turns out to be HW4.

I don’t have enough knowledge about chips to say for sure, could someone who knows these staff comment on this?

(This is not OT, since implications of HW4 could have Osborne effects closer to its rumored release date. Also, I think Dojo is a much bigger deal for the future of the company than most people realized)

 

[ProfTournesol]

I am seeing ghosts...
Elon tweet

SerPent
SaxoPhone

S&P announcement today

No ghosts.... this is it!

 

[T@oo]

Also there is something fishy about the reported new chip order from TSMC.
It has been widely reported as HW4, but it might not be so, it might actually be the Dojo chip we are speculating.

The news article Ferragu replied to mentioned they use some kind of new “system on waffle” technique to directly build the whole system on waffle without base plate or PCB, then glue it to heat sinks.
A 12 inch waffle only yields 25 systems, and its 7nm.
That’s far too big of an area for next gen FSD computer. Also the order is for only 2000 waffles, so only 50k systems tops.

As some comments under Ferragu’s tweet did point it out.

From what we heard(maybe not supposed to though) from autonomous day, HW4 would be more about iterating HW3 and make it cheaper and faster, I would expect lower costs and energy consumption, also performance improvements within 2x-10x, not the kind of big revolution if the new chip turns out to be HW4.

I don’t have enough knowledge about chips to say for sure, could someone who knows these staff comment on this?

(This is not OT, since implications of HW4 could have Osborne effects closer to its rumored release date. Also, I think Dojo is a much bigger deal for the future of the company than most people realized)

I really like waffles. But in this case, shouldn't it be wafers?

 

[RobStark]

I see the continuos price cutting as a way to not only make progress on Tesla's mission, but also to make the market continue to improve. The continue improvement among competitors would not only benefit the EV as a whole, but Tesla in particular as it is seen as the leader in the market.

As more people become aware that EV are no longer in the crappy stage decade ago, this can potentially lead to more demand on Tesla's products.

And Tesla is in a stage where it's making exponential growth. It needs volume, not margin. Only with enough scale can Tesla achieve its mission, and only with enough scale, it can justify all the Giga/Tera factory in progress/planning.

There you go. Audi needs to react to Tesla to remain competitive.

Currently, Audi sells a compact electric CUV for what Tesla sells a midsize electric CUV.

Not because the cars are so horrible nobody wants them.

 

[Runarbt]

Not sure it's allowed today, due to the split timing, and all that, but it's a damn good theory and a great test of Tweet interpretation

Do you have any data supporting that S&P500 inclusion is not allowed before a split?

Asking, as I am doing some option plays to try to have some leverage when S&P500 is announced. If I can delay and save some time-cost, that would be great. ;-)