A look under our trunk: what's in our compute

xnx•about 3 hours ago

Apologies for repeating myself, but it's hard to convey how far ahead Waymo is in every area: sensors, vehicles, training data, markets served, simulation, infrastructure, operations, regulatory.

They're growing fast, but I do wonder what they see as the bottlenecks: municipal approval, training, manufacturing? It's really unfortunate that lobbying is slowing self-driving rollout in some of the biggest and most important cities: NYC, Chicago, DC.

liliumregale•about 2 hours ago

Is it unfortunate, or just a different priority in a different place?

Those are also cities with a great public option for transit (unlike, say, Dallas or the Bay Area where different municipalities squabble). One might laud New York driving people away from car culture when the subways/buses can serve more people, greener.

xnx•about 1 hour ago

Perhaps, but I can't think of why Waymo should be prohibited but not Uber or taxis.

cyberax•22 minutes ago

Buses and subways are not necessarily "greener".

realo•14 minutes ago

30 people in 30 waymos vs 30 people in an electric bus?

No contest.

p-o•about 3 hours ago

They really are the impressive tech, it's really a shame that they aren't the one capturing all the media spotlight.

I don't know if we'll get there eventually, but if we do, I won't be surprised if it's because of Waymo.

kilroy123•about 3 hours ago

Riding in one is pretty mind-blowing at first. But what's more shocking is how fast you get used to it. After a while it's just a boring car ride.

I wish more people would experience it and see that the future is now.

SeanAnderson•about 2 hours ago

It's beyond boring after a bit.

It reminds me of putting on noise-cancelling headphones in an already quiet room. You suddenly gain an appreciation for just how much quieter things could've been thanks to the contrast.

Similarly, having a vehicle accelerate/decelerate consistently, always taking turns with the same sharpness, etc.. all of it builds to this subtle feeling of the car ride fading into the background of the experience. You didn't realize those were features of a drive you could appreciate until experienced.

arjie•about 2 hours ago

Very cool. To be honest, I'd assumed they were using commodity hardware, but no real reason for that. Cool chip. It is quite interesting that so many large companies have their own chips for these things. I almost managed to get my hands on a couple of accidentally liquidated MTIA chips but I was too slow. I wonder what the chip is like and what the dev experience is writing for it.

It would just be cool to see what these guys have cooked up dev tools wise since Google has always been famed for good developer experience (often to such a degree that Xooglers are useless outside the exosuit).

belinder•about 2 hours ago

Would love to get them in nyc

arjie•about 2 hours ago

I thought that was stalled because the mayor didn't like it?[0] Any new developments?

> New York abandoned its proposal to allow self-driving taxis earlier this year. New York City’s new mayor, Zohran Mamdani, has said he would heavily weigh the interests of taxi drivers in deciding on rules for the technology.

0: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/17/technology/waymo-driverle...

xnx•14 minutes ago

Contact you mayor

htrp•about 2 hours ago

they now are doing a 5nm asic, what did they have before this?

hollow-moe•about 3 hours ago

Compute is under the trunk ??? Noted. At the price of RAM nowadays it's like the new copper !

A look under our trunk: what's in our compute

⚡ Community Insights

Discussion (14 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews