If Tesla and Apple are really playing in the next game, then the latter clearly has the upper hand in terms of talent. Just a few weeks ago, Tesla hired legendary chip architect Jim Keller as the new "Vice President of Automatic Cruise Hardware Engineering", and now there are reports that he used to be at DEC Alpha, PA Semi and Apple. Peter Bannon, an executive, also joined Tesla.
Before moving from Apple to AMD in 2012, Kaile and Baron led Apple's processor development business, which began with Apple's acquisition of chip manufacturing company PA Semi in 2008. The two led the development of the Apple A4 and A5 processors, which were used by most of the company's mobile devices from 2010 to 2012. Kaile then moved to AMD to develop the Zen architecture, but Bannon remained in Apple and developed a variety of processors for it until last week to join Tesla with Kaile.
There are dozens of processor-related patents that list Bannon as an inventor, but he is just one of Tesla's recent executives from Apple. In addition to indicating that Tesla and Apple may continue to break out, the fact that Banon joined Tesla also raised a very interesting question: Is Tesla ready to design his own processor?
At first glance, it seems unlikely, but the car manufacturer has now hired the best two processor architects today. Of course, their expertise does include some useful skills for other parts of Tesla, but Tesla is well positioned to take full advantage of their core skills. After last week’s report that Tesla hired Kaile, Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas mentioned the matter in Tesla’s fourth-quarter earnings report and asked Tes Pulling the CEO, does this mean that the company will develop its own processor. The dialogue at the time was as follows:
Jonas: I want to ask two questions. First of all, can you confirm that the legendary person in the microprocessor industry, Jim Kay, has joined your company to lead the hardware engineering of Tesla's automatic cruise department? Is this news true? In addition, does this mean that Tesla may design its own chip?
Tesla CEO Elon Musk: I think everyone knows that Keller has joined Tesla. We are always hiring talented people. Jim is one of them, but some people are more concerned by the media. But I think Tesla is absorbing talent at an incredible speed. As for the second question, I can only say: no comment.
Tesla has confirmed the joining of Kaile, but Musk declined to comment on the chip issue. However, Tesla is still likely to design his own chip. When Tesla launched the Model S in 2012, it was reported that the company used NVIDIA's Tegra processor to support the central control, infotainment, navigation and instrumentation components. The two companies continued this partnership in Model X last year.
Nvidia CEO Huang Renxun is a fan of Tesla, who owns three Tesla cars. At an event last year, Huang Renxun announced the development of a driverless car computing platform called NVIDIA DRIVE PX, and Musk also discussed driverless cars with Huang Renxun at that event. Musk also praised Nvidia's technology at the time: "NVIDIA's Tegra performed very well, which is very important for the future development of driverless cars." Tesla only confirmed that the Tegra 3 chip will be used for Model X, but there are rumors that Tesla will use the DRIVE PX platform from NVIDIA to support the auto-driving function of Tesla, but there is no clear evidence to support this.
Tesla is currently using Autoye's EyeQ technology to support Autopilot's vision system. According to a report by Bloomberg last year, according to an email conversation between Musk and the famous hacker George Hotz, Tesla may replace Mobileye's technology - Hotz is also developing his own Driverless car platform. After the report came out, Mobileye's share price plummeted by 7% within a few hours, but Tesla later clarified the rumors and issued a statement saying: Mobileye's technology "is a global leader in the industry" and said it will continue to use The company's EyeQ vision chip.
But Tesla’s remarks were made before the appointment of Keller and Banon, and this recruitment decision will definitely surprise Nvidia and Mobileye. Although Tesla is unlikely to start a resource-intensive project such as chip manufacturing, it is indeed possible for the company to design its own chips and then outsource manufacturing. Since auto-cruising has become a "top priority" for Tesla, if for some reason the computing platform becomes an obstacle to autonomous driving, it is not difficult to imagine that Tesla may develop such a platform.
It is worth noting that Tesla has also produced many components for its own electric vehicles. It is estimated that the company's current vertical integration rate is about 80%. Specific to the "digger war" between Tesla and Apple, it seems that there are already many former senior engineers of Apple working in Tesla's engineering team. In addition to Kaile and Banon, including former apple alloy experts, Charles Tehman, vice president of materials engineering, former vice president of Apple Mac engineering, and former vice president of Tesla Engineering, Doug Doug Field, former director of Apple Alloy Engineering and current vice president of Tesla products, Rich Heley.
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