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Interesting pieces: - First principles hardware design of focused self driving computer (many times better than any competing existing hardware). Already shipp

Interesting pieces: - First principles hardware design of focused self driving computer (many times better than any competing existing hardware). Already shipping in all newly produced cars. Currently working on next gen that will be 3x better to ship in a couple years. - Lidar is an unnecessary mistake that competitors are making that won't succeed (too expensive, need too many, unnecessary). - Real world fleet testing is critical to success, simulations are not good enough since there are too many unknown unknowns in the real world. Tesla uses simulations too, but nobody else comes close on real world fleet testing.

grey-area 8y ago
This software talk is fascinating and a great introduction to neural nets.
dwighttk 8y ago
"many times better than competitors" "next gen that will be 3x better to ship in a couple years" applying psudomathematical varnish to marketing-speak
- fossuser 8y ago
  I was summarizing - they gave explicit technical details in the talk.
  - dwighttk 8y ago
    Nvidia says they were comparing against an inferior chip https://www.marketwatch.com/story/nvidia-says-tesla-inaccurate-in-self-driving-comparison-2019-04-22 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/nvidia-says-tesla-inaccura...
- DeonPenny 8y ago
  The talk was extremely technical
sytelus 8y ago
> Lidar is an unnecessary mistake that competitors are making This is very controversial and rest of the industry thinks exact opposite, many even claiming that Tesla is being irresponsible and even delusional in trying to do autonomy without lidar. The main points I have heard in favor of lidar are that computer vision is very flaky not only in suboptimal weather but even in good weather. Cameras are simply no where close to in performance in dynamic range, rapid adaptation, focusing etc as human eye. Imagine car going under the shaded road with rapid changes between bright light and shade. The likelihood that your depth estimation will get messed up is very high. Of course, night driving becomes highly questionable as well. In additional the long range depth estimation is very flaky with stereo vision right now and a topic of research for mono-vision. If you want to retreat to level-4 only and that too with conservative speed, weather etc then may be vision+radar more doable?
- fossuser 8y ago
  They pair it with a forward facing radar which is inexpensive and good at depth perception. Elon predicts all competitors will eventually drop lidar. He mentions it's expensive, but also not as good in a lot of cases (and all roads/signs are designed for vision). He argues that getting vision to work is a prerequisite for getting self-driving to work and once you have it working, lidar is worthless (and unnecessary).
  - gamblor956 8y ago
    Elon Musk is noted for his premature optimization. Case in point: both the Gigafactory (vastly overbuilt for the quantity of batteries actually produced) and the Alien Dreadnought (vastly overbuilt for the number of cars Tesla current produces...assuming that Tesla is ever able to get the fancy automation working). Boring Co digging a two-mile tunnel in West LA without bothering to learn how to pour concrete smoothly, or to make the "rails" the proper width, or learning about ventilation, or access points....
    - Fricken 8y ago
      It's easier to optimize a working system than it is to get an optimized system working.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
Traster 8y ago
You missed the most glorious part of >Currently working on next gen that will be 3x better to ship in a couple years. Someone asked what the primary design objective of the next generation chip would be and the engineer muttered 'safety' before Musk made the 3x claim.
- DuskStar 8y ago
  Eh, I'm pretty fine with that. Imagine the current gen slightly beats human drivers - also known as "revolutionary, but not perfect" - of course the next gen would focus on improving safety further.
mhermher 8y ago
Next iteration of FSD is going to be 3 times as full. Can't wait.
navigatesol 8y ago
>many times better than any competing existing hardware Except that it isn't. NVIDA's Drive AGX Pegasus delivers 320 TOPS: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/nvidia-says-tesla-inaccurate-in-self-driving-comparison-2019-04-22?mod=technology https://www.marketwatch.com/story/nvidia-says-tesla-inaccura... Of course, nobody inside the Musk Reality Distortion Field actually cares about this.
- invisible 8y ago
  Not that I'm confident about either side of this, but the TOPS isn't the only important factor here. It's also the efficiency. If Tesla's CPU can do more ops/watt, then it's more ideal for the conditions that Tesla needs the CPU to fulfill. On top of that, I have no idea what "320 TOPS" means in the context of the specific workload Tesla has. Will they _actually_ get 320 TOPS?
justapassenger 8y ago
> Currently working on next gen that will be 3x better to ship in a couple years. That's ... not great. If that was CPU type of unit, it'd be great. But TPU-type accelerators are growing at massive speed (as it's still pretty new and simple tech), where you're more looking for 10x type of gains.

grey-area 8y ago

This software talk is fascinating and a great introduction to neural nets.

dwighttk 8y ago

"many times better than competitors" "next gen that will be 3x better to ship in a couple years" applying psudomathematical varnish to marketing-speak

fossuser 8y ago
I was summarizing - they gave explicit technical details in the talk.
- dwighttk 8y ago
  Nvidia says they were comparing against an inferior chip https://www.marketwatch.com/story/nvidia-says-tesla-inaccurate-in-self-driving-comparison-2019-04-22 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/nvidia-says-tesla-inaccura...
DeonPenny 8y ago
The talk was extremely technical

sytelus 8y ago

> Lidar is an unnecessary mistake that competitors are making This is very controversial and rest of the industry thinks exact opposite, many even claiming that Tesla is being irresponsible and even delusional in trying to do autonomy without lidar. The main points I have heard in favor of lidar are that computer vision is very flaky not only in suboptimal weather but even in good weather. Cameras are simply no where close to in performance in dynamic range, rapid adaptation, focusing etc as human eye. Imagine car going under the shaded road with rapid changes between bright light and shade. The likelihood that your depth estimation will get messed up is very high. Of course, night driving becomes highly questionable as well. In additional the long range depth estimation is very flaky with stereo vision right now and a topic of research for mono-vision. If you want to retreat to level-4 only and that too with conservative speed, weather etc then may be vision+radar more doable?

fossuser 8y ago
They pair it with a forward facing radar which is inexpensive and good at depth perception. Elon predicts all competitors will eventually drop lidar. He mentions it's expensive, but also not as good in a lot of cases (and all roads/signs are designed for vision). He argues that getting vision to work is a prerequisite for getting self-driving to work and once you have it working, lidar is worthless (and unnecessary).
- gamblor956 8y ago
  Elon Musk is noted for his premature optimization. Case in point: both the Gigafactory (vastly overbuilt for the quantity of batteries actually produced) and the Alien Dreadnought (vastly overbuilt for the number of cars Tesla current produces...assuming that Tesla is ever able to get the fancy automation working). Boring Co digging a two-mile tunnel in West LA without bothering to learn how to pour concrete smoothly, or to make the "rails" the proper width, or learning about ventilation, or access points....
  - Fricken 8y ago
    It's easier to optimize a working system than it is to get an optimized system working.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

Traster 8y ago

You missed the most glorious part of >Currently working on next gen that will be 3x better to ship in a couple years. Someone asked what the primary design objective of the next generation chip would be and the engineer muttered 'safety' before Musk made the 3x claim.

DuskStar 8y ago
Eh, I'm pretty fine with that. Imagine the current gen slightly beats human drivers - also known as "revolutionary, but not perfect" - of course the next gen would focus on improving safety further.

mhermher 8y ago

Next iteration of FSD is going to be 3 times as full. Can't wait.

navigatesol 8y ago

>many times better than any competing existing hardware Except that it isn't. NVIDA's Drive AGX Pegasus delivers 320 TOPS: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/nvidia-says-tesla-inaccurate-in-self-driving-comparison-2019-04-22?mod=technology https://www.marketwatch.com/story/nvidia-says-tesla-inaccura... Of course, nobody inside the Musk Reality Distortion Field actually cares about this.

invisible 8y ago
Not that I'm confident about either side of this, but the TOPS isn't the only important factor here. It's also the efficiency. If Tesla's CPU can do more ops/watt, then it's more ideal for the conditions that Tesla needs the CPU to fulfill. On top of that, I have no idea what "320 TOPS" means in the context of the specific workload Tesla has. Will they _actually_ get 320 TOPS?

justapassenger 8y ago

> Currently working on next gen that will be 3x better to ship in a couple years. That's ... not great. If that was CPU type of unit, it'd be great. But TPU-type accelerators are growing at massive speed (as it's still pretty new and simple tech), where you're more looking for 10x type of gains.