> A typical automotive ECU chip now is about 7 billion gates. So it is bigger, 3x bigger, and there are big power challenges. As a simple example, the way that’s really measured now is, “Oh, it translates into a much smaller range for the car,” because of how much energy is consumed by the compute die.
The person saying this is very knowledgeable in the field, far more than I’ll ever be. Still, that doesn’t pass the sniff test. I cannot believe an automotive ECU consumes a non-trivial portion of the vehicle’s power budget. There’s just no way a CPU draws more power than an air conditioner, let alone an electric drive motor. (And surely they’re talking about electric cars, because an ICE dissipates orders of magnitude more heat than any common CPU, and no one talks about electronic stuff shortening an ICE car’s range.)
> A typical automotive ECU chip now is about 7 billion gates. So it is bigger, 3x bigger, and there are big power challenges. As a simple example, the way that’s really measured now is, “Oh, it translates into a much smaller range for the car,” because of how much energy is consumed by the compute die.
The person saying this is very knowledgeable in the field, far more than I’ll ever be. Still, that doesn’t pass the sniff test. I cannot believe an automotive ECU consumes a non-trivial portion of the vehicle’s power budget. There’s just no way a CPU draws more power than an air conditioner, let alone an electric drive motor. (And surely they’re talking about electric cars, because an ICE dissipates orders of magnitude more heat than any common CPU, and no one talks about electronic stuff shortening an ICE car’s range.)