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Worn Out EMMC Chips Are Crippling Older Teslas (hackaday.com)

submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by AgreeableLandscape@lemmy.ml to c/technology@lemmy.ml

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Always comforting to know that a multi-tonne metal box that costs 50 grand and can travel at 140 KPH and mow down unsuspecting bystanders is running off what's essentially an SD card. Great engineering there, Elon!

Even the higher end phones don't use eMMC anymore, they use NVME single-chip SSDs.

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[–] AgreeableLandscape@lemmy.ml 4 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (7 children)

They can't even replace just that chip. It's soldered. The days of being able to take the storage out of a mainboard without destroying the rest of it are coming to a close.

[–] holdengreen@lemmygrad.ml 4 points 2 years ago (6 children)

I don't agree. It's almost certainly a BGA which means it is more difficult to desolder (I would use chip quik normally) but still can be done. See Louis Rossman's videos.

[–] AgreeableLandscape@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (5 children)

Reflowing a board is expensive and doesn't have a great success rate. You can pretty easily damage the rest of the board while trying to reflow a chip. Or damage the chip itself. As Louis Rossman has also shown and discussed in his videos.

But you what is dirt cheap and has almost a 100% success rate? Unplugging a storage card from the socket and replacing it.

[–] holdengreen@lemmygrad.ml 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I haven't reflowed before so I wouldn't know. I think you are suggesting an SD card instead of a eMMC. That can work and prob wouldn't be more expensive, but that's an SPI interface I think so slower than what might be an 8bit interface on the eMMC.

maybe more components should be socket'd......

[–] AgreeableLandscape@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

I think you are suggesting an SD card instead of a eMMC.

Not really, maybe a socketed eMMC chip like you can find on single board computers?

Or, if we're being honest, why are we using eMMC on a car? It's not exactly a rock solid storage solution and does not inspire confidence when used on a vehicle of all things. Use an mSATA SSD or something, at least. Hell, even mSATA is on its way out in favour of NVME but it's still way better than eMMC. The freaking car is 50 grand or more and they're too cheap to even have a proper SSD?

[–] holdengreen@lemmygrad.ml 5 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

I didn't know you can get that, so maybe I'll use it in a design....

Now under normal circumstances, this wouldn’t be an issue. There are literally billions of devices running Linux from an eMMC chip. But any competent embedded Linux developer would take the steps necessary to make sure the operating system’s various log files are not being written to a non-replaceable storage device soldered onto the board

Unfortunately, for reasons that still remain somewhat unclear, the build of Linux running on the MCU is doing exactly that. What’s worse, Tesla’s graphical interface appears to be generating its own additional log messages. Despite the likelihood that nobody will ever actually read them, for every second a Tesla is driving down the road, more lines are being added to the log files.

wow now reading this that's so f*cking stupid.

Or, if we’re being honest, why are we using eMMC on a car? It’s not exactly a rock solid storage solution and does not inspire confidence when used on a vehicle of all things. Use an mSATA SSD or something, at least. The freaking car is 50 grand or more and they’re too cheap to even have a proper SSD?

idk I wouldn't drive one of those things anyways. I just know where eMMCs can be useful.

[–] FuckBigTech347@lemmygrad.ml 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Unfortunately, for reasons that still remain somewhat unclear, the build of Linux running on the MCU is doing exactly that. What’s worse, Tesla’s graphical interface appears to be generating its own additional log messages. Despite the likelihood that nobody will ever actually read them, for every second a Tesla is driving down the road, more lines are being added to the log files.

Doesn't this also mean that the eMMC will eventually run out of storage space? I remember when I did something which also generated a lot of log files on an SBC. After a few months of 24/7 operation there was so much stuff in /var/log that the 64GB eMMC was almost completely full.

Please don't tell me they set up a cron job or something to delete some log files every day/week/month so this wouldn't happen. Because that would mean that they are aware of the fact, that they're writing massive amounts of log files to flash memory over and over again.

[–] holdengreen@lemmygrad.ml 1 points 2 years ago

Maybe it was some programmer who's good with code but doesn't bother to understand hardware.

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