Right under our nose
Apple car right under our nose!!!! Last week apple introduced to the world 2 new chips. The M1 Pro and M1 Max. Their introduction was met with great fanfare and excitement. Mostly for those waiting for the new MacBook pros and the upgrade to the Apple silicon.
But what if we saw the introduction of apple’s future move towards the apple car.
These chips highlighted the development of the M1 chip, released last year, with the M1 chips released last week. Apple has not been idle and have developed some powerful and significant improvements.
It got me to thinking have we been seeing the apple car development right in front of our eyes.
Tesla Development
Tesla has demonstrated their inhouse development of chips gave them an edge to bring top to bottom and end to end integration with significant advancements to their vehicles and the FSD package.
Granted the development of Tesla chips is significantly different to apple but that only makes it more interesting to see the advancement.
Tesla spent a number of years working to develop the chips as shown below.
Has apple been doing the same right under our nose? The M1 Chips have made some significant advancements in the configuration and construct of the chips. The performance metrics that apple outlined hint at a highly powerful, low power chip that can manage a large load for extended duration.
Full self-driving as shown by Tesla utilizes these very things to manage the system on the vehicle and the world around it.
So, what makes the Apple chips so impressive.
M1PRO
Even in apples own words it is “scary fast”.
Interesting choice of words.
But really this is a great example of apples thinking regarding future of computers.
It also gives a better understanding of what they are working on. Efficiencies in chips that are made in house and integrated top to bottom, end to end.
Yet why have we not seen the development of apple car and only hearing rumours.
Have they been constrained by the chips of the past?
Apple car right under our nose!!!! So, the introduction of the Pro chip makes sense to be in Laptops and work towards faster processing. As has been demonstrated by several reviews (Verge cast)
Of course, apple doesn’t stop with one chip they introduced the M1 Max.
This chip starts to demonstrate the innovation that apple has been working on. Rethinking how a chip could be developed to manage large quantities of data using least amount of power and producing performance off the scale.
M1 Max
In their own words it is faster than the Pro.
I believe apple has had to wait for the development of their own silicon to get the power they need to move forward with their Apple car development. It is only now that we are seeing this come to fruition.
My thoughts
Firstly, let me just say I am not and engineer, digital architect, technical person who trained in any related field to create or construct chips, cars, or other tech devices.
These ideas are simply that just ideas and speculation.
Full self driving
So, let’s take the M1 Pro and put it in the context of a Full self-driving vehicle.
The architecture allows for high-speed bandwidth and transfer of data. One might say this is one feature that would be well suited to a full self-driving computer to manage thousands of pieces of data being input to manage the world around a vehicle.
Apple also outlined the power efficiencies that are made with the introduction of these new chips. This also lends itself to the use in electric power vehicles.
As Elon Musk has shown at his AI day and Battery Day, it is the incremental improvements that could be combined together that make the difference to the performance of a vehicle.
Both simple examples of Apple chips could be combined with other innovations apple has made over the years to truly build a Full self-driving computer.
Their incremental advances in chip technology are just one example of their technology prowess.
Why the MacBook if apple car is the target.
Apple car right under our nose!!!! Now I have made no secret that I am an apple fan boy just as much as a Tesla fan boy. I think competition is a good thing for the EV marketplace and with rumours that apple is working on a car floating around for years now it does make me wonder if there are some truths to those rumours, it has just been timing that has been the issue.
With these new chips they could ultimately work towards that Full Self driving future.
Testing the chips in MacBook’s allows for large volume data collection of their performance.
Tesla so far
It is well known that Tesla currently is leading the world of Self driving vehicles with their proprietary system “Full Self Driving”. They have also continued to develop hardware that supports the FSD future.
This development has been focused on the vehicles Full self-driving chips that support the functions of the FSD capabilities.
On top of which they are also rewriting the history of the Vision only system and the utilization of video rendering over still image rendering of object identification.
At Tesla’s AI day a huge focus of the day was the in-house hardware development of Chips for the DOJO system Tesla’s training program for their increased advancement of the FSD program.
The chip design when revealed, surprised many in the computing world with their sheer power and innovative thinking. Utilizing different way of thinking provided new and innovative approaches to chip design and construction.
It is no secret that Tesla is looking to make the world safer for drivers with Full Self driving and computer vision. The current view with Autopilot, which again uses a subset of skills to manage driving, has proven that using these tools provide a safer driving experience.
Even today there are reports of an ex-Tesla employee being recruited by Apple for the purpose of developing their autonomous driving capability.
Apple has not completely given up on the Apple car and with the introduction of these new chips is working towards and endgame that is yet to be realized.
All are welcome
Regardless of the innovation by both apple and tesla and many other companies in this space, ultimately the winner is the consumer and the environment.
So as a fan boy of both companies I look forward to the evolution that is yet to come.
Dave
DAVE’S Blog posts
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