Tesla is rumored to partner with Samsung for 4-nm chip in self-driving HW 5.0

Tesla is rumored to have partnered with Samsung to produce a new self-driving chip based on a 4-nanometer node for Tesla’s Hardware 5 (HW 5.0).

Back in 2016, Tesla started building a team of chip architects led by legendary chip designer, Jim Keller, to develop its own silicon.

The goal was to design a super powerful and efficient chip to achieve self-driving in consumer vehicles without additional hardware like in the custom-built autonomous vehicles operated by Waymo and Cruise.

In 2019, Tesla finally unveiled the chip as part of its Hardware 3.0 (HW 3.0) self-driving computer.

They claim a factor of 21 improvements in frame-per-second processing versus the previous-generation Tesla Autopilot hardware, which was powered by Nvidia hardware, while only barely increasing the power consumption.

Last year, Tesla started to build cars wth Hardware 4.0 self-driving hardware, but the automaker didn’t elaborate on its latest chip because not all cars are equipped with it yet.

While HW 4.0 propagates to all its models, Tesla is already working on its next-generation hardware.

The Korean Economic Daily reports that Tesla has partnered with Samsung to use their latest 4-nm node technology to build its next self-driving chip:

The chips, to be manufactured on Samsung’s 4-nanometer node, will go into Tesla’s Hardware 5 (HW 5.0) computers, which the EV maker plans to mass-produce three to four years from now, industry officials said on Tuesday.

Tesla has worked with Samsung on HW 3.0, and it has been rumored to work with the Korean chip manufacturer on HW 4.0.

But it was also reported that Tesla has also secured a large order of its self-driving chip from Taiwan’s TSMC.

The new report doesn’t make it clear if Tesla plans to now work with both Samsung and TSMC on its next-gen chip or just Samsung.

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