3 ms·

I’d like to hear more about the situation with integration. Like you know if you take a look at the innards of a 80s pc (say 286) it will be chock full of disc

by Pelam 6y ago

I’d like to hear more about the situation with integration. Like you know if you take a look at the innards of a 80s pc (say 286) it will be chock full of discrete ICs. Caches, bus controllers. Now its just a handful of chips plus tons of firmware. I find it strange that the number of features and sensors would so directly drive the number of semis. Maybe at first, but in the end a car will be a ”SoC” (or few) like everything else. What am I missing?

csours 6y ago
I think you may be able to integrate modules, and thus reduce ICs by having general compute rather than a module for each purpose (Engine Control/Transmission Control/Body Control etc); however, the sensors have to exist in physical form at distinct locations on the vehicle, and those sensors will require chips.
zrobotics 6y ago
Distance and RFI. A desktop PC can realistically connect everything on one PCB, whereas something the size of a car needs wires to connect everything. If you want to compare a car to a computer, the better analogy would be a LAN. A car being one chip makes as little sense as trying to hook up a whole office to one server, running all the display cables and USB for peripherals to one spot. Sure, it maybe could be done, but who wants to spend the money dragging all those wires vs one run of cat6? Same thing with cars. For instance, it isn't uncommon for the automatic window roll down feature to be implemented in the door itself. It's just easier to have more localized controllers that communicate over a network (CANBUS) than it is to run physical wiring to send every signal to where it needs to go. Sure, it isn't uncommon to have very underpowered machines on people's desks that don't do much more than drive a monitor and process keyboard input, but there still needs to be some sort of machine to connect those peripherals and send info over the network. This isn't that different from a car, this is exactly how there end up being 30+ different modules in a vehicle. Think of the automatic window roll down feature in the front passenger door. Thus relies on either sensing motor current or timing. It's way easier to throw a small microcontroller in there to accomplish this than run 20-30 feet of wiring in total to send all the signals back to one master controller. Wiring is way more expensive than most people realize, the wiring harness on a car is tremendously expensive to produce. Reducing wiring complexity saves enough money that it is easy to justify the engineering and BOM cost of an additional module.
deleted 6y ago
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by Pelam 6y ago

csours 6y ago

I think you may be able to integrate modules, and thus reduce ICs by having general compute rather than a module for each purpose (Engine Control/Transmission Control/Body Control etc); however, the sensors have to exist in physical form at distinct locations on the vehicle, and those sensors will require chips.

zrobotics 6y ago

Distance and RFI. A desktop PC can realistically connect everything on one PCB, whereas something the size of a car needs wires to connect everything. If you want to compare a car to a computer, the better analogy would be a LAN. A car being one chip makes as little sense as trying to hook up a whole office to one server, running all the display cables and USB for peripherals to one spot. Sure, it maybe could be done, but who wants to spend the money dragging all those wires vs one run of cat6? Same thing with cars. For instance, it isn't uncommon for the automatic window roll down feature to be implemented in the door itself. It's just easier to have more localized controllers that communicate over a network (CANBUS) than it is to run physical wiring to send every signal to where it needs to go. Sure, it isn't uncommon to have very underpowered machines on people's desks that don't do much more than drive a monitor and process keyboard input, but there still needs to be some sort of machine to connect those peripherals and send info over the network. This isn't that different from a car, this is exactly how there end up being 30+ different modules in a vehicle. Think of the automatic window roll down feature in the front passenger door. Thus relies on either sensing motor current or timing. It's way easier to throw a small microcontroller in there to accomplish this than run 20-30 feet of wiring in total to send all the signals back to one master controller. Wiring is way more expensive than most people realize, the wiring harness on a car is tremendously expensive to produce. Reducing wiring complexity saves enough money that it is easy to justify the engineering and BOM cost of an additional module.

deleted 6y ago

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