Tesla Autopilot Hardware 4.0 Physical Teardown: Adding Radar and Providing More Cameras

On February 16, Tesla’s new self-driving computer, known as Hardware 4.0 (HW4), has been leaked, and the company appears to be already building some cars with the new system.

We've known for some time that Tesla has been preparing to upgrade its self-driving hardware. Tesla previously applied to the Federal Communications Commission to add a new radar to its vehicles and said it planned to start sales in January. The new radar will mean Tesla plans to update its Autopilot and FSD sensor suites.

The hardware changes are stressful for Tesla owners as the automaker has promised that all vehicles it built since 2016 will have all the hardware needed to enable self-driving via software updates . That proved not to be the case, as Tesla needed a more powerful computer and launched the HW3, although the company did offer the upgrade free to existing owners.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has previously confirmed that Tesla will not provide free upgrades to HW4, but he said that he still plans to use HW3 to realize its autonomous driving promises, and HW4 will only Push performance even higher.

Blogger Green The Only managed to get a new HW4 computer from a new Model X car and disassemble it. He said that compared with HW3.0, the hardware size of 4.0 has become larger and the interface is completely different. The previous 3.0 cannot be upgraded, which is also in line with Musk's previous statement.

Tesla’s Autopilot computer is integrated with the infotainment computer, which has also been updated in this HW4 upgrade. Green said of the change: "Compared to the current unit, the infotainment system has been redesigned. The GPU is now on the same board, so there is no longer a GPU daughter board. This makes the entire unit thinner and more No changes - same 256G NVMe storage and 16G memory, same AMD CPU and GPU."

##As for the Tesla HW4 computer itself, Green said the upgrade was smaller than he expected, still based on Samsung's Exynos-IP, but this time increasing the number of CPU cores from 12 to 20 (5 clusters, 4 cores each), with a maximum frequency of 2.35GHz , the idle frequency is 1.37GHz, the number of TRIP cores is increased from 2 to 3, and the maximum frequency is 2.2GHz.

However, he noticed that HW4 has some improvements in security. But at the same time, the new circuit board consumes more power than HW3 when idle. In addition, Tesla has also improved the redundancy of the system. The configuration is dual, and the overall design of the motherboard is also very symmetrical. This is Obviously important in self-driving cars.

In terms of sensors, the motherboard interface can provide us with more information about the new sensors in HW4. Tesla has been moving toward a vision (camera)-based approach, having done away with its radar and ultrasonic sensors with great fanfare.

HW4 shows that Tesla seems to be adding more cameras. Currently, Tesla has eight cameras in its hardware suite, but now the new computer has ports for 12 cameras, although one port is labeled "spare." Judging from the naming of the interface, Tesla will change the front windshield camera to two, and also add two side cameras and a front bumper camera, suggesting that Tesla may provide a 360 surround view function.

In addition, the GPS module should also be upgraded, now it is a tri-band GPS antenna module.

Finally, Green also found evidence that Tesla has reintegrated radar into its sensor suite, with the HW4.0 having a forward-facing radar as well as a radar heating system.

IT House has learned that after Tesla stopped using its radar in June last year, Musk said that the safety of pure vision would be higher, not lower, than visual radar. Vision has gotten so good that radar actually reduces signal/noise. However, he also said that Tesla may still use radar if a "very high-resolution radar" is available.

It’s unclear when Tesla plans to officially unveil the new HW4, but the March 1 Investor Day might be a good time.

The above is the detailed content of Tesla Autopilot Hardware 4.0 Physical Teardown: Adding Radar and Providing More Cameras. For more information, please follow other related articles on the PHP Chinese website!