Tesla Reportedly Hires Samsung To Manufacture Custom Chips To Power Autopilot

It seems that mergers and deals are now the order of the day in the world of technology because we just can’t seem to open the news at any point in time and not see that a company is planning to sign an agreement with another or even, there being a speculation of such kind of deals existing. The recent ones that we have heard about is the possible linkage that would be between the management of Intel and that of AMD which would see the latter company licence out its Radeon graphics card to Intel for the manufacture of their own graphics processors and again, we hear that Apple is seriously pushing to secure a Hollywood deal that would make sure that movies are released on iTunes at the same time that they are showing in theatres, a potential billion dollar move for the company should all parties agree to all the parts of the deal later. In recent news, it seems that there is a billion that is looking to grab a deal on their own too with Samsung and well, this is not the conventional place that you would find the South Korean OEM.
When Samsung is not busy blowing us away with the kind of impressive devices that they release into the market now and then, it seems that they have a superpower in other areas of technology too, and Tesla has found out how good they are at what they do so much that they would be contracting the Galaxy bandmaster to make the System on Chips (SoCs) that would end up in the self-driving cars that the automobile company is developing. If we recall very well, Google is one of the leading firms in the technology of self-driving cars, and they have even reached top stages in their technology as of this time but with the likes of Tesla still in the competition, we know that we were in for a battle of the greatest which would benefit the customers a lot and in a bid to advance its technology, Tesla believes that Samsung is the perfect go-to brand when it comes to these kinds of chipsets.
Before we make any assumptions or comments about this deal itself and go any further, it is worthy of note that Samsung is no newbie to the manufacture of chipsets as we have seen them wow us time and again with the Exynos chipsets that they make for their devices in-house, and if that is not enough convincing, the fact that even QUALCOMM is contracting the production of the Snapdragon 830 chipset to this brand is something to speak good of how efficient they are in that regards also.
According to a company representative from Tesla, this deal is not one that would fizzle out very fast as it has been said that the needed technology would mean that both companies must stay in touch with one another for nothing less than three years over which Samsung would be committed to developing and integrating whatever chipsets it deems fit for the driverless cars that Tesla wants to get out on the market. For both of the parties involved, this is a win-win situation because, in the game of chips, Samsung is definitely no slouch and for Samsung on the other hand, this is their chance to make further impact in the automobile industry, a diversification that would yield even more billions for them in the long run and could even prompt them into the development of an automobile department to add to their ever-growing list of start-ups.
Tesla had been in partnership with the management of MobileEye, a start-up that is based in Israel, for the supply of the chips that they made use of in their cars up until the time when one of these cars crashed, and the fatal accident led to the death of one of their drivers. With that kind of occurrence on ground, it would be hard for customers to actually trust that the motors of Tesla are still safe and they, therefore, had to do away with this company, meaning that they are in the market for someone to fill that void, explaining why it is rational that they are considering putting pen to paper with Samsung on a chipset deal.
Further adding spice to this rumor is the fact that last year, Tesla made a move that resulted in the hiring of one of the leading technology architects at AMD, Jim Keller, who has been responsible for the creation of a lot of chipset and development of technology components in the past. Believed to have also worked on the projects that led to the creation of both the A4 and A5 chips that Apple incorporated in its smartphones for that time, it is little wonder that the move to start developing autonomous vehicles began to gain traction over at Tesla when his appointment was made, and Samsung is now at the forefront of this project.
This would not be the first time that Samsung would be contracted to make some of their components specially tailored for some third-party users as they even had to put all sentiments asides sometimes ago and develop parts that ran into several billion in cost for Apple, ending the partnership not so long ago just because Apple was concerned that some of the technology that the South Korean manufacturer creates could compromise the data of its users.
For now, Samsung is dedicated to putting it all into the manufacture of next year’s Galaxy S8, and when their attention gets shifted from that one, we would love to see them do something nice in the automobile industry too.