As Tesla’s Full Self-Driving system slowly evolves, it seems to be requiring ever more computing power.

Back in 2016, Tesla announced a hardware upgrade, including a new computer from Nvidia, which it said would enable full self-driving capability, with future software updates. Since then, Tesla has upgraded the computer twice. In 2019, it introduced the Tesla Full Self-Driving (FSD) computer, which features a chip of Tesla’s own design, and is produced by Samsung.

Never one to rest on its laurels (not that FSD has really won any laurels yet), Tesla has been developing yet another new generation of this chip.

At last month’s AI Day, Tesla unveiled a new line of in-house-designed chips for its Dojo high-speed computer, which will power the next generation of Autopilot, and also announced that new FSD hardware will be released along with Cybertruck in “about a year or so.”

“I am confident that Hardware 3, or the Full Self-Driving computer 1, will be able to [achieve] full self-driving at a safety level much greater than humans,” said Elon Musk. However, he also referred to an upcoming new generation: “Obviously, there will be a Hardware 4 or Self Driving Computer 2, which we will probably introduce with the Cybertruck maybe in about a year or so. That will be about 4 times more capable.”

Now the Korea Economic Daily reports that Tesla is in the final stages of negotiating the production of the new chip with Samsung. “Tesla and Samsung’s foundry division have been working on the design and samples of the chip from the start of this year. Recently, Tesla decided to outsource the HW 4.0 self-driving chip to Samsung. It’s virtually a done deal.”

“Samsung Electronics plans to mass-produce the Tesla HW 4.0 chip at its main Hwasung plant in Korea using the 7-nanometer processing technology in the fourth quarter of this year at the earliest,” said the Korea Economic Daily’s sources.

Source: Korea Economic Daily via Electrek