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Tesla Is Working With AMD To Develop Its Own AI Chip For Self-Driving Cars (cnbc.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: Tesla is getting closer to having its own chip for handling autonomous driving tasks in its cars. The carmaker has received back samples of the first implementation of its processor and is now running tests on it, said a source familiar with the matter. The effort to build its own chip is in line with Tesla's push to be vertically integrated and decrease reliance on other companies. But Tesla isn't completely going it alone in chip development, according to the source, and will build on top of AMD intellectual property. On Wednesday Sanjay Jha, CEO of AMD spin-off GlobalFoundries, said at the company's technology conference in Santa Clara, California, that the company is working directly with Tesla. GlobalFoundries, which fabricates chips, has a wafer supply agreement in place with AMD through 2020. Tesla's silicon project is bounding ahead under the leadership of longtime chip architect Jim Keller, the head of Autopilot hardware and software since the departure of Apple veteran Chris Lattner in June. Keller, 57, joined Tesla in early 2016 following two stints at AMD and one at Apple. Keller arrived at Apple in 2008 through its acquisition of Palo Alto Semiconductor and was the designer of Apple's A4 and A5 iPhone chips, among other things. More than 50 people are working on the initiative under Keller, the source said. Tesla has brought on several AMD veterans after hiring Keller, including director Ganesh Venkataramanan, principal hardware engineer Bill McGee and system circuit design lead Dan Bailey.
Florian Mueller predicts the (German) auto companies will become patent trolls, as the tech industry takes over autonomous car design:
http://www.fosspatents.com/201...
Are we going to see a convergence, where tech companies and auto companies team up, or a divergence, where tech companies produce the new vehicles and legacy car companies shrink into irrelevance?
The only thing I can predict with great confidence is that the cost for a replacement CPU board for a Tesla will be A Lot More than the cost of the constituent parts. (Nissan charged me $1500 for a truck wiring harness after mice chewed the insulation. It's really hard to believe that almost 6% of the cost of that truck was in the wiring harness.)