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As far as I can tell Tesla doesn't even use Dojo seriously yet. The real work is still done on NVIDIA hardware.

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cjbgkagh 4y ago
It seems like to me they took a big bet and it didn’t pay off. They may not have felt like they could rely on Nvidia to deliver the promised Tensor Core performance.
- kjksf 4y ago
  It's a bit premature to call this a failure given they are barely at a stage of making first chips and validating them. You don't seem to understand the timelines of designing chips like that from scratch. Dojo has been in works for almost 7 years. Tesla will continue to work on this for the next 20 years. There will be Dojo v2, Dojo v3 etc. just like at SpaceX there was Falcon 1, Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy. This still might end up a failure but they clearly feel confident enough to talk about Dojo publicly, which wasn't the case for the first 5 years of its development.
  - cjbgkagh 4y ago
    Thanks for explaining to me what I don’t know. Clearly you’re a Tesla fanboy. There is no doubt that it is an amazing piece of tech but I’m not confident Tesla will be able to pull off beating NVidia. Especially when compared to NVidias Tensor Cores and economics of scale. I don’t like their whole approach to self driving ML. I know a lot of people disagree with me so I would rather not get into it. I think a lot of the talk of future performance is posturing in order to get NVidia chips at cheaper prices.
    - minhazm 4y ago
      I'm sure that it's at least partially for them to have a better negotiating position with NVIDIA. But the reality is that Tesla actually has some very good expertise in chip design. Jim Keller worked there for several years and along with Pete Bannon designed their Autopilot HW3 computer which is in 1+ million cars right now. At the time that HW3 was released it outperformed what NVIDIA had to offer. That said it's not likely they'll be able to beat NVIDIA, but they may be able to beat them for their hyper domain specific use cases. Additionally NVIDIA chips are difficult to get and they're extremely expensive. Even if Tesla can get something that performs 80-90% as good as NVIDIA but at significantly lower cost then it may still be worth it.
      - cjbgkagh 4y ago
        I know these things. I think some of the dojo architecture was a reaction to their FSD chips being over optimized for resnet style models. They’re targeting extremely large models which is a new frontier for ML and in my view not the panacea they hoped it would be. I think with better ML they wouldn’t need so many chips, be it NVidia or Dojo.
  - mupuff1234 4y ago
    It's even more premature to predict what will happen 20 years in the future.
kjksf 4y ago
Yes, per the talk Dojo is at the stage of having made first chips. But your comment is neither here not there. What do you think is a timeline for designing a chip like Dojo from scratch? Tesla has been working on this for almost 7 years (https://www.linkedin.com/in/ganesh-venkataramanan-99272a3/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/ganesh-venkataramanan-99272a3/). They might not work fast enough for your satisfaction but can you point any other car company designing chips like Dojo? Hell, can you point to any company at all that can come out of the gate with a chip design competitive with the best design of NVIDIA, a company that makes nothing but chips? After 7 years of work they are clearly confident that this will work or else they would scarp the project instead of giving talks at conferences.
- panick21_ 4y ago
  Also, even if the first version didn't make financial sense, building the team and the infrastructure required to make this work will likely translate into a next generation chip. Part of Tesla vertical integration mantra is that you are building internal capacity.
- FireBeyond 4y ago
  > After 7 years of work they are clearly confident that this will work or else they would scarp the project instead of giving talks at conferences. They are clearly confident that FSD will work, to the point of promising it "this year"... coincidentally, they've been promising "this year" for the last 7 years. And FSD still fails in spectacular/hilarious/horrifying ways, and isn't _remotely_ close.
- aunty_helen 4y ago
  >After 7 years of work they are clearly confident that this will work or else they would scarp the project instead of giving talks at conferences. Being real for a second, Tesla don’t have an amazing track record of delivery on their ai software side of things.
- p1esk 4y ago
  Hell, can you point to any company at all that can come out of the gate with a chip design competitive with the best design of NVIDIA, a company that makes nothing but chips? Google.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

It seems like to me they took a big bet and it didn’t pay off. They may not have felt like they could rely on Nvidia to deliver the promised Tensor Core performance.

kjksf 4y ago
It's a bit premature to call this a failure given they are barely at a stage of making first chips and validating them. You don't seem to understand the timelines of designing chips like that from scratch. Dojo has been in works for almost 7 years. Tesla will continue to work on this for the next 20 years. There will be Dojo v2, Dojo v3 etc. just like at SpaceX there was Falcon 1, Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy. This still might end up a failure but they clearly feel confident enough to talk about Dojo publicly, which wasn't the case for the first 5 years of its development.
- cjbgkagh 4y ago
  Thanks for explaining to me what I don’t know. Clearly you’re a Tesla fanboy. There is no doubt that it is an amazing piece of tech but I’m not confident Tesla will be able to pull off beating NVidia. Especially when compared to NVidias Tensor Cores and economics of scale. I don’t like their whole approach to self driving ML. I know a lot of people disagree with me so I would rather not get into it. I think a lot of the talk of future performance is posturing in order to get NVidia chips at cheaper prices.
  - minhazm 4y ago
    I'm sure that it's at least partially for them to have a better negotiating position with NVIDIA. But the reality is that Tesla actually has some very good expertise in chip design. Jim Keller worked there for several years and along with Pete Bannon designed their Autopilot HW3 computer which is in 1+ million cars right now. At the time that HW3 was released it outperformed what NVIDIA had to offer. That said it's not likely they'll be able to beat NVIDIA, but they may be able to beat them for their hyper domain specific use cases. Additionally NVIDIA chips are difficult to get and they're extremely expensive. Even if Tesla can get something that performs 80-90% as good as NVIDIA but at significantly lower cost then it may still be worth it.
    - cjbgkagh 4y ago
      I know these things. I think some of the dojo architecture was a reaction to their FSD chips being over optimized for resnet style models. They’re targeting extremely large models which is a new frontier for ML and in my view not the panacea they hoped it would be. I think with better ML they wouldn’t need so many chips, be it NVidia or Dojo.
- mupuff1234 4y ago
  It's even more premature to predict what will happen 20 years in the future.

kjksf 4y ago

Yes, per the talk Dojo is at the stage of having made first chips. But your comment is neither here not there. What do you think is a timeline for designing a chip like Dojo from scratch? Tesla has been working on this for almost 7 years (https://www.linkedin.com/in/ganesh-venkataramanan-99272a3/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/ganesh-venkataramanan-99272a3/). They might not work fast enough for your satisfaction but can you point any other car company designing chips like Dojo? Hell, can you point to any company at all that can come out of the gate with a chip design competitive with the best design of NVIDIA, a company that makes nothing but chips? After 7 years of work they are clearly confident that this will work or else they would scarp the project instead of giving talks at conferences.

panick21_ 4y ago
Also, even if the first version didn't make financial sense, building the team and the infrastructure required to make this work will likely translate into a next generation chip. Part of Tesla vertical integration mantra is that you are building internal capacity.
FireBeyond 4y ago
> After 7 years of work they are clearly confident that this will work or else they would scarp the project instead of giving talks at conferences. They are clearly confident that FSD will work, to the point of promising it "this year"... coincidentally, they've been promising "this year" for the last 7 years. And FSD still fails in spectacular/hilarious/horrifying ways, and isn't _remotely_ close.
aunty_helen 4y ago
>After 7 years of work they are clearly confident that this will work or else they would scarp the project instead of giving talks at conferences. Being real for a second, Tesla don’t have an amazing track record of delivery on their ai software side of things.
p1esk 4y ago
Hell, can you point to any company at all that can come out of the gate with a chip design competitive with the best design of NVIDIA, a company that makes nothing but chips? Google.