4 ms·
The math for ASICs works out if you’re going to mint hundreds of thousands of chips. Tesla is building 500K cars per year, so they definitely cross the threshol
by ttul 6y ago
The math for ASICs works out if you’re going to mint hundreds of thousands of chips. Tesla is building 500K cars per year, so they definitely cross the threshold for economic viability. The NRE costs for the best TSMC node is easily >$10M, but that is peanuts for Tesla against 500,000 units.
Source: I once spent a year analyzing custom ASICs for Bitcoin mining.
- darksaints 6y agoBut the parent was talking about training. I don't think tesla is training machine learning models in their cars.
- nine_k 6y agoStill it's $20 per car for the cost of training hardware, no matter how many units of this hardware is required, within reason. This is a rather acceptable cost. And they may potentially have an upper hand in development of such ASICs, in-house tools for them, etc. Of course there is a risk that the results won't be impressive. Likely it's a calculated risk.