8 ms·
Right now, with HW2 Tesla is in kind of an awkward no man's land where their hardware is overkill for basic ADAS, but nowhere near enough for any kind of autono
by Fricken 8y ago
Right now, with HW2 Tesla is in kind of an awkward no man's land where their hardware is overkill for basic ADAS, but nowhere near enough for any kind of autonomy that allows the driver to turn their attention away from the driving task.
By going to a custom ASIC with inferencing. I have little doubt about Musk's claim that it'll offer a 10x improvement over the current stripped down PX Drive2 variant for deep learning tasks. If I'm to decrypt Musk's branded terminology and take him at his word, then they'll be going from about 8 TOPS to 80 TOPs with that they'll be able to get even deeper into the no man's land that's even more overkill for basic ADAS but still not nearly enough to handle full self driving safely in all conditions, though maybe they'll get L3 highway out of it.
Nvidia's upcoming Pegasus board will supposedly do 320 TOPS, and their competitor, Intel/Mobileye's EyeQ5 will likely have comparable specs. These motherboards are designed to replace Robotaxi trunks brimming with ~$150k in liquid cooled compute that draw 3-4000 watts.
- tim333 8y agoIt's hard to say for sure they are no where near full autonomy in their research although their current vehicles crashing into barriers and fire trucks obviously don't cut it.
- Fricken 8y agoI'm only commenting on what little there is to glean about the compute, but there are so many other red flags about their autonomous development strategy. Crippling per-unit cost constraints, No Lidar, SLAM-lite, ANN heavy, insufficient redundancy and they've got a major data collection problem because they're relying on what they can get over the air. Plus Musk scared away most of their their top engineers.
- tomp 8y agoSerious question- why is LIDAR so important? Obviously it’s possible to drive without it (humans do it), so it’s conceivable that eventually machines will be able to do it as well... So I’m guessing your point is, that won’t happen anytime soon and LIDAR is the fastest way to market; can you confirm/expand/clarify?
- wyldfire 8y agoThe standard of safety for autonomous drivers will have to be far beyond parity with humans. Humans cause car accidents all the time. LIDAR gives unambiguous depth and probably much easier object segmentation, no complexity or reasoning required like computing from stereo images.
- p1esk 8y agoGood point, plus if you have to choose between having LIDAR and acceptable self-driving capability in 3 years, or no LIDAR and acceptable self-driving capability in 10 years, I think most people would prefer the first option.
- jey 8y agoSure, but then you're still left with the unsolved problem of getting lidar quality depth maps out of video in all lighting and weather conditions.
- throwaway648 8y agoEstimating distances robustly is very important for navigation. LIDAR is accurate at relevant distances and most importantly very robust against environmental effects. Without LIDAR you can use stereoscopic vision (like human with two eyes) but that is very demanding, not that accurate, and very error prone. Sure, human can do it somewhat well, but eye and brain are extremely complex things to implement (and it still takes years to learn to understand what you see). Personally, I’d refuse to implement self-driving vehicle without at least a ”backup LIDAR” to check vision system results. Otherwise you are forced to assume stuff like ”things at stand still are either above the road, beside it, or just shadows”, causing crashes when there is suddenly a stopped car in front of you. (If you didn’t do that assumption, you would be dodging shadows and other clutter..) [source: I’ve been researching vision algorithms in a related field.]
- sandworm101 8y ago>> Without LIDAR you can use stereoscopic vision (like human with two eyes) but that is very demanding, not that accurate, and very error prone. Because that isn't how people judge distances, at least not distances beyond a few feet in front of their faces. Plenty of people with only one eye do very well. It is a difficult problem because we use a variety of techniques and 'hardware' when estimating distances and speeds. Car companies are trying to do with one tool (ie lidar) something we do with many.
- tokipin 8y agoMusk commented about LIDAR in a prior earnings call[1]. Tl;dr he believes that LIDAR is a short-term crutch that distracts from the real long-term challenge, which is the machine learning, not the sensors. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FaW85fIos64&t=21m40s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FaW85fIos64&t=21m40s
- opencl 8y agoIf they were anywhere near full autonomy that LA-to-NYC demo they keep promising would have already happened.
- xedeon 8y agoElon mentioned on the Q2 conference call yesterday that specific demo is easily doable. He also added that it would be sort of cheating, because that's a very defined route and he prefers it to be able to be much more dynamic. i.e. pick any two US cites and the car will drive you there.
- gamblor956 8y agoThere are a number of routes one can take to get from LA to NY. Elon is stalling because he knows that "Autopilot" isn't capable of making the trip.
- xedeon 8y ago>Elon is stalling because he knows that "Autopilot" isn't capable of making the trip. I can only assume then that you have some kind of insider info to support your claim?
- gamblor956 8y agoI'm not the one claiming that Autopilot is able to make a cross-country trip but delaying the test because it would be "too easy" to prove anything. If it were actually that easy, Tesla would have done it, because Musk has never passed up the chance for that sort of publicity. Ergo, logically, if Tesla has not performed such a test, it is strong evidence that Autopilot is not currently capable of passing it.
- opencl 8y agoElon said the exact same thing in the Q4 2017 earnings call. And then said they would still do the demo in the next 3-6 months. It's been 6 months and this "easily doable" demo has still not been done. Tesla has shown zero evidence of their self driving program making any meaningful progress. http://www.autonews.com/article/20180208/MOBILITY/180209770/tesla-musk-autonomous-drive-newyork-losangeles http://www.autonews.com/article/20180208/MOBILITY/180209770/...
- izend 8y agoWhat is Waymo using? Custom ASIC?
- Fricken 8y agoWaymo pretty top-secret about their hardware, so I'm not sure. I would venture to guess that if they don't have a custom ASIC yet they're working on one. I know they had Intel FPGAs and it's a safe bet they've integrated Google's tensor core architecture.
- bob_theslob646 8y agoWasn't a bunch of stuff declassified during their lawsuit with Uber?
- Fricken 8y agoA bunch of details about their lidar came out in the depositions, and lots of juicy gossip about their internal politics, power struggles and backroom dealings. I don't recall reading anything about their compute.
- wyldfire 8y agoWaymo's advantages include LIDAR and extremely detailed maps, IIRC. If I had to guess, those maps probably help them distinguish between roadside objects that happen to be static right now and ones that are really not going anywhere.
- haberman 8y agoI ordered a Tesla Model 3 yesterday. When I see the "Full Self-Driving Capability" checkbox at checkout time (it's an option you can pay $3,000 for right now) I just have zero confidence that they can deliver on this. Almost every other aspect of the car is fantastic. But Tesla's delusions about achieving full self-driving with their current approach just make me lose some respect for them. It makes me worried that they might be deluded about other things too. I use the word "deluded" above realizing that I might be completely wrong. If they pull it off I'll eat crow and give them props. But I just don't see it happening.
- dev_dull 8y agoAre the model 3 hardware modular? For example, is it possible they’ll have you bring it to the dealer in a few years and get outfitted with these new chips?
- modeless 8y agoYes, Musk said that on the earnings call. But the hardware upgrade is not the hard part of self driving. At least they have stopped claiming that their current hardware is powerful enough for full self driving already, which was a ridiculous and worrying position for them to take.
- dragonwriter 8y ago> ridiculous and worrying I think “fraudulent” would be more accurate; it was factually false, it was at best entirely unfounded if not actually knowingly false, it was material to decisions of people to purchase the self-driving add-on.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- ckastner 8y ago> At least they have stopped claiming that their current hardware is powerful enough for full self driving already The Autopilot page [1] still states the following: "All Tesla vehicles produced in our factory, including Model 3, have the hardware needed for full self-driving capability at a safety level substantially greater than that of a human driver." [1] https://www.tesla.com/autopilot https://www.tesla.com/autopilot
- h4b4n3r0 8y agoStill not going to work for autonomy. Expect better ADAS and nothing else. The computer vision problems they need to solve to make autonomy work reliably are not solved yet, and I would be willing to bet good money that they won’t be able to get anywhere near L5 with the sensors they install today and without a LIDAR.
- GreenPlastic 8y agoAre they hardware limited? It seems like the limiting factor is the convnet rather than the hardware...do they think it would be more safe with less latency?