In recent weeks, Elon Musk, the founder and permanent head of Tesla, does not get tired of repeating that the existing electric cars of the brand by the end of the year can receive new software that will allow them to move on public roads in the vast majority of situations without driver intervention. control. There are no fundamental technical barriers to this, but there are legal barriers.

This week, the China Times reported that Tesla relied on Broadcom support to develop the fourth-generation chip, and Taiwanese company TSMC will produce it using 7nm technology. It will also carry out key operations on packing the crystal into a package ( InFO SoW ), which will receive an integrated heat spreader for more efficient cooling. In the fourth quarter of this year, the production of trial batches of the processor will begin in an amount equivalent to no more than two thousand silicon wafers. Mass production will only begin in the fourth quarter of 2021.

As Electrek explains, such a schedule is quite consistent with Tesla’s own statements. Introducing the third-generation chip last year, she confirmed that she was already working on a successor, and also explained that it would be three times the performance of the current solution. The novelty was supposed to reach the production stage in two years. The third-generation Tesla chip, which was helped to develop by notorious processor architect Jim Keller, is now manufactured by Samsung. Apparently, its successor will hit the TSMC conveyor not only because of the attractive properties of 7-nm technology but also because of TSMC’s ability to provide a breakthrough in semiconductor packaging.