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If self-driving turns out to need a new CPU/GPU/XYZPU to run the software, that's a pretty easy retrofit: take out one board and replace it with a new board of

If self-driving turns out to need a new CPU/GPU/XYZPU to run the software, that's a pretty easy retrofit: take out one board and replace it with a new board of the same physical size. It's the sensors that can't be replaced, because they involve mounting and wiring in a lot of different places.

robotresearcher 9y ago
Assuming power draw, cooling and connectivity are the same. That's a big assumption.
- mastazi 9y ago
  That's a good point, but given the current general trend I would expect a newer gen board to be probably more power efficient, of course that's just speculation since I don't have insider knowledge about this specific project.
  - felippee 9y ago
    Power per operation is certainly decreasing, not as rapidly as in the old days though. However, it is completely not clear how much compute power is necessary for sufficient level of cognition that would allow L4 autonomy. Experimental cars (such as Waymo or Uber) have literally a data center in their trunk that takes up many Kilowatts of power. Whether Tesla can do it in at most a few hundred watts without LIDAR is _highly_ questionable.
    - robotresearcher 9y ago
      Do you have a source for that? I've seen in the trunk of working research cars with less resources than a high-end gaming PC. Multiple KW is more than normal car air conditioning can deal with, since a resting human outputs about 100W. Do these cars vent to the outside? Otherwise, if outputting multiple KW, your Calfornia-based research car is gonna get nasty very quickly.
      - felippee 9y ago
        My source is a chat with several engineers at companies I cannot disclose. I also used to work for a company that develops autonomous navigation solution. If you have on the order of 10 LIDARS on your vehicle and same number of cameras and other sensors, I can assure you a single Drive PX will not be enough for even basic processing of that data. Also note, that a high end gaming computer can easily exceed peak usage of 1kW, and if it is packed with say 4GPU's it very quickly approaches 2kW. The computers have custom cooling loops and vent outside, exact solutions vary between companies. And even with all that compute, nobody out there is any close to level 4, better yet level 5. And Tesla promises to solve level 5 with drive PX, few cameras and a radar (not a single LIDAR) and magical software. I'd really like to see this :)
      - Fricken 9y ago
        Ford's in-house autonomous development team did a Medium post on what they were working with. They avoided hard numbers, but revealed a few interesting things: >Of course, additional functions require additional power — a lot of it. A standard gas-powered car doesn’t have enough electrical power for an autonomous vehicle, so we’ve had to tap into Fusion Hybrid’s high-voltage battery pack by adding a second, independent power converter to help create two sources of power to maintain robustness. https://medium.com/self-driven/building-fords-next-generation-autonomous-development-vehicle-82a6160a7965 https://medium.com/self-driven/building-fords-next-generatio...
monk_e_boy 9y ago
Deivers communicate with each other all the time on narrow roads (non verbal) i cant see current tesla cars being able to do that without more hardware. I often wave a car on, so it will move out of my way. A self driving car could do that using a screen or some suite of LEDs, but teslas dont have those in them yet.
remarkEon 9y ago
Switching out motherboards is not a simple ask. There's a ton of other issues that you'd have to test for on some non-trivial amount of existing vehicles with the old gen hardware. And some point you might get confident enough you won't see heat, power, or signal issues that you can justify a mass replacement of the hardware but it's not a quick and dirty swap.
- dagw 9y ago
  Switching out motherboards is not a simple ask. Unless the car was designed from the beginning with the notion that upgrading the motherboard is something they might want to offer in the future.

robotresearcher 9y ago

Assuming power draw, cooling and connectivity are the same. That's a big assumption.

mastazi 9y ago
That's a good point, but given the current general trend I would expect a newer gen board to be probably more power efficient, of course that's just speculation since I don't have insider knowledge about this specific project.
- felippee 9y ago
  Power per operation is certainly decreasing, not as rapidly as in the old days though. However, it is completely not clear how much compute power is necessary for sufficient level of cognition that would allow L4 autonomy. Experimental cars (such as Waymo or Uber) have literally a data center in their trunk that takes up many Kilowatts of power. Whether Tesla can do it in at most a few hundred watts without LIDAR is _highly_ questionable.
  - robotresearcher 9y ago
    Do you have a source for that? I've seen in the trunk of working research cars with less resources than a high-end gaming PC. Multiple KW is more than normal car air conditioning can deal with, since a resting human outputs about 100W. Do these cars vent to the outside? Otherwise, if outputting multiple KW, your Calfornia-based research car is gonna get nasty very quickly.
    - felippee 9y ago
      My source is a chat with several engineers at companies I cannot disclose. I also used to work for a company that develops autonomous navigation solution. If you have on the order of 10 LIDARS on your vehicle and same number of cameras and other sensors, I can assure you a single Drive PX will not be enough for even basic processing of that data. Also note, that a high end gaming computer can easily exceed peak usage of 1kW, and if it is packed with say 4GPU's it very quickly approaches 2kW. The computers have custom cooling loops and vent outside, exact solutions vary between companies. And even with all that compute, nobody out there is any close to level 4, better yet level 5. And Tesla promises to solve level 5 with drive PX, few cameras and a radar (not a single LIDAR) and magical software. I'd really like to see this :)
    - Fricken 9y ago
      Ford's in-house autonomous development team did a Medium post on what they were working with. They avoided hard numbers, but revealed a few interesting things: >Of course, additional functions require additional power — a lot of it. A standard gas-powered car doesn’t have enough electrical power for an autonomous vehicle, so we’ve had to tap into Fusion Hybrid’s high-voltage battery pack by adding a second, independent power converter to help create two sources of power to maintain robustness. https://medium.com/self-driven/building-fords-next-generation-autonomous-development-vehicle-82a6160a7965 https://medium.com/self-driven/building-fords-next-generatio...

monk_e_boy 9y ago

Deivers communicate with each other all the time on narrow roads (non verbal) i cant see current tesla cars being able to do that without more hardware. I often wave a car on, so it will move out of my way. A self driving car could do that using a screen or some suite of LEDs, but teslas dont have those in them yet.

remarkEon 9y ago

Switching out motherboards is not a simple ask. There's a ton of other issues that you'd have to test for on some non-trivial amount of existing vehicles with the old gen hardware. And some point you might get confident enough you won't see heat, power, or signal issues that you can justify a mass replacement of the hardware but it's not a quick and dirty swap.

dagw 9y ago
Switching out motherboards is not a simple ask. Unless the car was designed from the beginning with the notion that upgrading the motherboard is something they might want to offer in the future.