Tesla 4D radar first dismantled: embedded AI chip, costing 1,000 yuan

Source: Smart Car Reference (ID: AI4Auto)

Author: Deng Simiao

The Tesla 4D millimeter wave radar that was just put into the car was disassembled.

After someone got a new Model In terms of appearance and parameters, it is exactly the same as the document released by the US FCC in December last year. In response, netizens called out:

The claim that purely visual solutions are better is a lie.

It is reported that the total cost of this millimeter wave radar is about US$120 (approximately RMB 859), and the built-in AI chips come from AMD and Micron.

A series of disassembly pictures, all from the well-known Tesla hacker @greentheonly Green God. First, open the front cabin cover of this Model X, and then remove the front trunk and cabin dust cover, you can see:

△The arrow is the reference object, and the box is the location of the millimeter wave radar.

This is what it looks like from the side:

The radar installation location can be observed from the arrow position:

After the radar is removed, it looks like this:

The front view of millimeter wave radar is shown in the figure:

The back shows some basic parameters of the millimeter-wave radar, such as the number "1541584", which is not produced in the United States, where Tesla is headquartered... This information is basically consistent with what was announced by the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) in December last year.

After further disassembly, the inside of the radar looks like this:

After scraping off the pink thermal paste, the embedded AI chip was exposed.

It can be observed that the millimeter wave radar processing part PCB uses AMD's Xilinx (Xilinx) FPGA chip. The model is XA7Z020. It is said to contain two ARM A9 cores, 130-level 10,000-gate circuits, 53,200 LUTs, and a DSP computing power of 276GMACs. , the price is about 40-60 US dollars (domestic price is between 900-1800 yuan).

In addition, there is a piece of Micron Technology's DDR3 on it, with a capacity of 125MB, model MT41K64M16TW-107 AUT, and the price is about US$1. The upper part of the PCB may be the Ethernet physical layer or the MIPI CSI-2 physical layer chip, and the right part is the power supply. It is said that the BOM cost of this millimeter wave radar is about US$115, and the PCB is US$5, which adds up to about US$120.

The back of the circuit board is shown in the figure:

As for which company Tesla's radar comes from, its specific name, and whether it is a 4D millimeter wave radar... it can't be seen from the picture. As early as October 2020, foreign media electrek released news that Tesla was adding a new 4D radar with twice the range of the previous radar.

It mentioned the Israeli startup Arbe Robotics, which has a radar called "Phoenix". It happened that Phoenix was also mentioned in Tesla's official report at that time.

Therefore, the current consensus on the Internet is that the millimeter-wave radar brought back by Tesla has a higher resolution, is 4D, and comes from Arbe.

In terms of specific parameters, Phoenix can approximately double the detection range of Tesla’s original millimeter wave radar to 300 meters. (The original ARS410 has a range of 160 meters) and its most important feature is ultra-high resolution (1°azimuth 1.7°elevation).

This plays into Musk's hands. Because Musk once said that millimeter-wave radar is not impossible, and high-resolution ones can actually outperform purely visual solutions. Unfortunately, there was no product that met Musk's needs at the time.

But some people countered that the radar may not come from Arbe, an Israeli company. No matter what, one thing that is certain at present is that Green God said that Tesla’s millimeter wave radar has a very high resolution.

Tesla's move to cancel millimeter wave radar has caused a lot of controversy.

In April 2021, the V9.0 beta version of the autonomous driving system FSD announced that it would adopt a pure visual solution.

One month later, in May 2021, newly delivered Model 3 and Model Y models in North America were no longer equipped with millimeter wave radar.

At that time, many people were puzzled. The cost was only a few hundred yuan, so why not add some safety redundancy to the autonomous driving system? Musk’s response was that pure vision is safer than vision + radar.

He further explained that radar data and camera signals are both bit streams. The amount of information in cameras is already several orders of magnitude higher than that of radar. Adding radar actually reduces the signal-to-noise ratio. Andrej Karpathy, then Tesla's AI director, also analyzed the problems of millimeter wave radar in detail at the CVPR'21 WAD autonomous driving seminar. He listed three scenarios.

In the first case, when the vehicle in front brakes quickly, the millimeter wave radar cannot track the vehicle in front well. The data behaves like the vehicle in front disappears and appears repeatedly in a short period of time, which may mislead the autonomous driving system (yellow line). In comparison, the performance of purely visual solutions is smooth enough.

In the second case, there is an overpass ahead.

3D millimeter wave radar has no vertical resolution and will think that there is a stationary object in front of you, causing "ghost braking".

In the third situation, there is a large truck parked on the roadside ahead.

Millimeter wave radar cannot determine whether the object in front is stationary. The task is given to the visual sensor, which can make a judgment at a distance of 110 meters. The purely visual solution can make a judgment at a distance of 180 meters and start decelerating at 145 meters. Tesla has summarized more than 6,000 scenarios like this, which can be divided into 70 categories. They are continuously run in the simulation system every day to improve the capabilities of the neural network, so that the radar can eventually be cancelled.

However, outside of academic conferences, the actual performance of purely visual solutions is unsatisfactory. Starting from the end of 2021, the 8-camera Tesla will go on sale in North America. However, with its launch, the number of Tesla complaints surged by 3,000% in a short period of time, most of which were about the "ghost brake" problem.

The essence of ghost braking is actually a forward recognition error, mistaking shadows, plastic bags and other objects that do not affect driving into cars, pedestrians, etc. And this happens to be the most important redundant role of millimeter wave radar. Nowadays, the newly delivered Model X/S with HW4.0 hardware in North America are equipped with millimeter wave radar, which may be able to reduce this problem.

But judging from the latest situation, not all models upgraded to HW4.0 hardware will have millimeter wave radars. According to the latest news from @Teslascope, a foreign vertical media focusing on Tesla, the just-delivered HW4.0 Model Y is confirmed to have no millimeter wave radar.

It is worth mentioning that in fact, the cancellation of millimeter wave radar was announced in May 21, and only the 3 and Y produced in North America were axed. It did not cover Model S and X, nor did it cover all Teslas produced outside North America. car model.

So it seems understandable that the current HW4.0 version of Model Y does not contain millimeter wave radar. As for whether the new Model 3 will have radar after the facelift, it is not known yet. It is speculated that in order to save costs, it will most likely be consistent with the new Model Y.

If this is indeed the case - HW4.0 Model Y and 3 will not contain millimeter wave radar, that is, they will still adopt the purely visual solution based on cameras, then what else is worth looking forward to?

According to previous reports, the FSD self-driving chip equipped with HW4.0 will have about three times the performance of current self-driving chips. In terms of sensor configuration, it is rumored that there are 12 camera interfaces, one of which is marked as "spare". The actual number of cameras is likely to be 11 (currently 8).

In addition, the distribution position of the entire car's cameras has also been slightly changed, and the camera performance has been improved - it is said to support a higher resolution of 2896x1876 and 5.4 million pixels.

In short, Musk commented on HW4.0 this way:

HW4.0 surpasses HW3.0. If the previous generation was 200% or 300% safer than humans, then HW4.0 may be 500% or 600% safer than humans. Moreover, it is said that the new Model 3, which is about to be put into production at the Shanghai factory, will have changes in appearance and interior, and the performance of the vehicle system and power system will also be different from before.

Combined with a series of actions such as Musk’s recent visit to China, Model 3’s domestic and overseas discounts of 20,000 to clear inventory, Tesla’s FSD being revealed to be approved in Shanghai, etc., it is estimated that Model 3 with new HW4.0 hardware will be released soon. Whether there is millimeter-wave radar or not, and whether Musk has regrets about pure vision, will soon be known.

Reference links:

https://twitter.com/greentheonly/status/1668440663157817345

https://twitter.com/teslascope/status/1664037391504662530

https://www.sohu.com/a/657828376_560178

This article is reprinted from "Smart Car Reference" by Global Internet of Things Observation. The content is the independent opinion of the author and does not represent the position of Global Internet of Things Observation. It is for communication and learning purposes only . If you have any questions, please contact us at info@gsi24.com.

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