Tesla chip

New on-board computer. © Tesla.

Until today, Tesla’s on-board computers ran on Nvidia chips. Now, the company has developed its own on-board computer equipped with its proprietary Tesla SoC. The in-house development team was led by Pete Bannon, a veteran engineer who has worked at Intel, P. A. Semi and, most recently, at Apple, where he worked on Apple’s SoC from 2008 to 2016 before joining Tesla. The new processor is specially designed to dedicate all of its AI to autonomous driving, allowing the computer to process the images produced by the 8 on-board cameras 21 times faster. Physically speaking, the new computer is the same size as the previous generation, making it possible to update previous Tesla models by simply swapping out the cards. For added security, the card is fully redundent, with two chips instead of one. All new Teslas (Model S, Model X and Model 3) currently coming off the assembly line are already equipped with the new computer. The SoC designed by Tesla is being fabricated by Samsung at 80% of the cost of the old Nvidia cards.

⇨ Circuit Breaker, “Tesla’s new self-driving chip is here, and this is your best look yet.”