Tesla: know your software and hardware

Tesla

Tesla Motors has evolved its electric vehicles, and especially stands out for the technology that these cars include. Unlike other more conventional cars, Elon Musk's cars They keep some interesting secrets regarding their software and hardware, the base that makes them work, that you have all the functions on board or where Autopilot is supported.

The truth is that they have not limited themselves to purchasing units from third parties, but rather have developed their own systemsNot everything is manufactured in-house, but at least they have been involved in the development helped by other companies to achieve what these electric vehicles have. Do you want to know more about it? Let's go there…

Tesla OS or Tesla Firmware

Tesla OS

American electric car giant Tesla is not known for going with the flow. This extends to your software. Instead of relying on a single pre-built operating system, Tesla has designed its own operating system and software, based on open source projects. Tesla takes advantage of these open-source projects to include them under the hood, based on projects such as the Linux kernel, the GNU toolchain and buildroot.

But Tesla doesn't just take random parts. They carefully select and configure these open source ingredients to create a system that meets your specific needs. Besides, Tesla's open source approach It has several advantages. First, it allows them access to a vast pool of high-quality existing code. This saves them time and resources compared to building everything from scratch. On the other hand, the open source community constantly improves and updates these tools, so Tesla benefits from continuous innovation. Finally, the use of open source software encourages collaboration and transparency, potentially leading to a more secure and reliable system.

It is important to note that Tesla's in-vehicle software goes beyond these open source components, as it also has Proprietary software developed 100% by Tesla, to manage or support specific vehicle features through its touch screen.

On the other hand, the system offers a series of very interesting points, such as:

  • OTA- The system is constantly receiving software updates to keep up with the latest code optimizations, feature improvements, as well as patches to fix bugs or vulnerabilities from previous versions.
  • Autopilot management: the main computer, from this system, also allows controlling the autonomous driving of the Tesla, that is, the Autopilot capabilities, allowing it to offer an interface to control this system and also receive relevant information from the sensors, cameras, etc.
  • Usability- Tesla's touchscreen interface is designed with ease of use in mind. You can control everything from climate settings to navigation and entertainment with just a few taps. The minimalist design complements Tesla's focus on a clean, futuristic driving experience.
  • Security: Tesla prioritizes security and the operating system reflects it. It includes robust measures to protect your car and its occupants from cyber threats. Regular updates ensure the system stays ahead of ever-evolving security risks. Nevertheless, It is not invulnerable to car hacking...

Tesla Car Computer

Tesla on-board computer

Tesla recently boasted a super powerful computer that powers their latest electric cars, that is, the electronic board that runs the operating system that I mentioned in the previous section. Now, after months of waiting, technology enthusiasts have obtained a unit and opened it, it turns out that the brain of these new Teslas has different elements than those initially rumored...

Instead of the rumored Zen 2 chip, Tesla opted for a custom Ryzen Embedded chip based on the Zen+ architecture (think of it as a refined version of Zen 1). This chip, with the mysterious code "YE180FC3T4MFG", is probably a quad-core processor with a decent cache for your daily car tasks.

The real surprise comes with the graphics card. This is not just any dedicated graphics card, rather it is a dedicated unit based on the Navi 23 GPU, that is, the AMD Radeon integrated in this APU. While early rumors suggested 32 processing units, it appears that this model actually has 28 CUs. These translate into 1792 streaming processors working at a clock frequency of about 2.8 GHz, which is not bad at all. Although the clock speed has not been confirmed by Tesla, CEO Elon Musk himself hinted at console-like performance, boasting an impressive 10 TFLOPS of processing power.

On the board we not only have this APU, it is also important to highlight other details:

  • AMD Ryzen YE180FC3T4MFG APU (with 4 processing cores and 45W TDP) 512 KB L2 cache per core and 4 MB of L3 cache memory.
  • AMD Radeon 215-130000026 GPU, looks similar to the Radeon Pro W6600.
  • Samsung LPDDR4 type RAM, distributed in four chips around the APU.
  • LG Innotek ATC5CPC001 Bluetooth/WiFi Module.
  • Quectel AG525R-GL mobile data modem and SPC5748GSMMJ6 gateway.
  • DSP 1 ADSP-SC587W SHARC+ Dual Core DSP with ARM Cortex-A5 cores.
  • DSP 2 AD21584 SHARC+ Dual Core DSP with ARM Cortex-A5 cores.
  • Realtek RTL9068ABD Ethernet Switch network card.

Tesla Hardware or FSD (Full Self-Driving)

FSD (Full Self-Driving)

It should not be confused with the previous computer, since this is another board included in Tesla models, and especially dedicated to processing all the information from the sensors and carrying out certain actions for autonomous driving with Autopilot. In this case we are referring to the motherboard that Tesla calls Tesla Hardware or Tesla FSD (Full Self-Driving). This board, over the years, has had several updates, such as the HW2, HW2.5, HW3 and now HW4 or FSD 2.

Tesla's Autopilot system has seen several major hardware revisions:

  • AP0: Without Autopilot. Early Tesla models lacked Autopilot hardware, and even parking sensors were optional extras at first.
  • Mobileye (AP1): This initial system, released in collaboration with Mobileye, was based on their EyeQ3 hardware. It controlled a single front camera, a radar sensor and ultrasonic sensors for parking assistance. While innovative, the limitations of this hardware led to a rift between Tesla and Mobileye.
  • Tesla Hardware (HW2, HW2.5): Also known as AP2, it was developed by Tesla, its own set of hardware. This included multiple cameras (including side and door pillar cameras), a more powerful central processing unit based on Nvidia's Drive PX2 system, and an improved radar. Later revisions (HW2.5 and HW3) brought additional improvements such as more processing power, memory, and even an interior camera in the Model 3.
  • Tesla Hardware 3 (FSD 1): It was an evolution of the previous one, this time using its own chips designed by Tesla and manufactured by Samsung, in order to improve the artificial intelligence and Autopilot functions of this model. These boards had another revision called HW3+, with slight changes. The system made its debut in 2021.
  • Tesla Hardware 4 (FSD 2): This new system will be the future of the new Tesla cars. This is an improvement over the previous one, with greater processing power and a new chip manufactured with 10nm technology, compared to the 14nm of the FSD1. In addition, it will include a new camera, updated radar unit, etc. Although there are not too many details yet...

To get to know these plates a little better, We will now focus on the HW3 or FSD1, which includes the following specifications:

  • FSD- The board was designed to integrate seamlessly into existing Tesla models. Hidden behind the glove compartment, this computer contains a dual independent FSD chip. Each chip has its own dedicated resources, including power supply, memory and operating system, creating a fully redundant system. This way, if one fails, the other takes control. This redundancy extends to the car's sensory inputs. Data from eight external cameras (and sometimes one internal one) along with information from radar, GPS and various other sensors is fed to both FSD chips simultaneously. Each chip then independently analyzes this data and formulates a plan for the car's next move when in automatic mode. Decisions made regarding the data are compared by a security system to ensure that they match and are correct. Only when both chips "agree" does the mechanics come into action through the vehicle's controls. All this on a PCB or motherboard with a consumption of more than 72W, each chip consuming 36W.
  • FSD chip: These are chips developed by Tesla, introduced in 2019, specifically designed to achieve an advanced level of autonomy in its cars. This chip is manufactured using Samsung's 14nm process technology and is equipped with a series of processors and hardware accelerators, including 12 ARM-based CPU cores and a Mali G71 MP12 GPU, plus two neural processing units or NPU. They began to be designed in 2016, with a design team led by Jim Keller, formerly of AMD (he also worked at Intel, Apple, PA Semi, DEC, etc.) and Pete Bannon, another old acquaintance in the sector, after having passed by Apple, Intel, PA Semi, and Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). The result was this SoC that includes:
    • GPU with three clusters, each with 4 ARM Cortex-A72 cores at 2.2 Ghz, that is, a total of 12 cores.
    • ARM Mali G71 MP12 GPU at 1 Ghz, with up to 600 GFLOPS.
    • Security system that guarantees that only code signed by Tesla is executed, avoiding malicious code.
    • Interface for the camera, which can process up to 2.500 billion pixels per second.
    • Integrated H.265 (HEVC) video encoder for various video and recording applications.
    • ISP is an image signal processor intended to process signals with up to 1000 billion pixels per second and noise reduction and mapping capabilities.
    • Double NPU or Neural Processing Unit, is a neural circuit with a matrix to accelerate AI tasks and with a combined peak performance of up to 73.700 billion operations per second.
    • Two memory controllers or MMU for 4 Mhz LPDDR2133 and 128-bit channel.

Images | VideoCardz | Electreck


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