Tesla FSD chip determines the producer, HW5.0 is coming?
At this year's investor day, Tesla did not announce new car information and did not release HW 4.0 materials, which can be said to disappoint the market. But some things are always late.
On July 18, South Korean media reported that Samsung Electronics will produce a new generation of FSD chips for Tesla HW 5.0. The chip will be manufactured using Samsung's 4nm process and is expected to support Level 5 autonomous driving functions.
You read that right, it's HW 5.0.
You know, Tesla HW4.0 is still the first to break the news @greentheonly Twitter users, and there is no official confirmation so far. Through disassembly, we probably know that HW4.0 has been initially put into production, so when will HW5.0 come out?
HW4.0 broke the news
According to reports, Tesla will mass-produce the HW5.0 platform in the next 3~4 years. It may be understood that Tesla's driverless car is expected to really reach the owner around 2026.
Two months ago, Samsung Chairman Lee Jae-yong and Musk met. At that time, there was news that the two discussed follow-up cooperation plans with automatic driving chips as the core.
In 2019, the first generation of FSD chips was built based on Samsung's 14nm process node, and was officially upgraded to the second generation of 7nm this year. From this point of view, it is not impossible for Tesla to continue to select Samsung to produce FSD chips for it.
It is worth noting that last year there were rumors in the industry that Tesla wanted to abandon Samsung and switch to the arms of TSMC. In the above report, Korean media also confirmed this information, saying that Tesla had selected TSMC as the sole foundry partner of the HW 5.0 chip last year.
As for why Tesla changed its original mind?
It is reported that it is because Lee Jae-yong put forward a series of conditions to Musk, including an OEM price that people cannot refuse.
As a chip foundry leader, TSMC's advanced process price is the most expensive in the industry. Some Taiwan media described TSMC as "5nm (wafer monolithic) foundry costs $17,000, and the next generation such as 3nm is even more expensive, and it is difficult for other companies other than Apple to follow up." ”
This is also the key reason why Google, Qualcomm, AMD and other companies transferred some products to Samsung.
In fact, in addition to ensuring production capacity, Samsung has increased the yield of 4nm to 75%, which is closer and closer to TSMC's 80% yield. Coupled with price reductions, preferential treatment and other measures, Samsung 4nm has naturally attracted a number of technology manufacturers.
Someone once calculated that if TSMC won all the FSD chip orders, then Tesla could become its top seven customers. Apple is currently TSMC's largest customer, contributing more than $16 billion in revenue in 2022.
Image source: TSMC 2022 Annual Report
Now, that account is likely to be ruined. However, South Korean industry insiders still believe that Tesla is more likely to hand over the new generation of FSD chips to Samsung and TSMC.
After all, the quality of TSMC's process is recognized.
Of course, for the automotive media, the focus of this news is not who will OEM Tesla's FSD chip, the chip itself and the upcoming HW5.0 are the focus. Let's review GreenTheOnly's previous revelations:
HW4.0 is equipped with the second generation FSD chip, which is built with Samsung's 7nm process (as above). On the whole, there is no particularly large upgrade compared with the first generation of chips, and the main upgrade is reflected in the chip itself, and the architecture has also been adjusted.
Including, the HW4.0 camera interface has been increased to 12, including 11 cameras in use and 1 camera for redundancy. In addition, the forward ADAS camera has been upgraded from 1.2M pixels to 5M pixels.
It cannot be ignored that the HW4.0 platform also adds a millimeter-wave radar interface. This is the most direct evidence that Tesla, who insists on a purely visual scheme, was "slapped in the face".
As for whether HW5.0 will have a "qualitative" leap, it is really curious.
Not long ago, Musk intentionally or unintentionally revealed that FSD v12 may take off the "Beta" and usher in the full version. At the 2023 World Artificial Intelligence Conference, Musk also said online that Tesla may have L4 or L5 full self-driving capabilities later this year.
In his words, Tesla's technology is already very close to the goal of full self-driving, and vehicles tested on U.S. roads already require little human intervention.
It is undeniable that Musk has always been convinced that driverless driving will be several times safer than human driving. From HW3.0 to HW4.0 to HW5.0, it may reach more than 10 times the safety. However, it must be noted that self-driving technology is evolving rapidly, and the algorithm alone has undergone several pushes and restarts.
Technical iteration is inevitable, more precisely a necessary process, but because of this, there is a big question mark over how the HW5.0, which will be mass-produced in a few years, will perform. Of course, it cannot be ruled out that Tesla will skip HW5.0 and release 6.0 directly.