Open driver-assistance
A self-driving computer where the whole system is settled reuse — except the eyes.
comma ships openpilot on open hardware. The compute, the CAN interface, the GPS are all settled reuse. Where cost and differentiation concentrate is perception: how the system sees, and at what energy — a frontier you can take or leave by your goal.
Exploded
Decompose the product into its stack. Each layer is colour-coded: settled, cyclical, or frontier.
Bill of materials
Every part is a real, sourced component from the open baseline — no invented part numbers.
Where the cost-and-differentiation question concentrates. The frontier option: event-based vision into an on-die spiking accelerator — compute only what moves, at lower latency and power — versus reusing the proven frame stack. Custom silicon and a less-mature pipeline are the cost.
https://www.ovt.com/products/ox03c10/ →Mobile SoC reused for compute — refreshes on a generation clock.
https://blog.comma.ai/comma3X/ →Mature MCU bridging to the vehicle bus. Reuse.
https://blog.comma.ai/comma3X/ →Density refreshes each generation. Reuse.
https://blog.comma.ai/comma3X/ →Standard panel. Reuse.
https://blog.comma.ai/comma3X/ →Standard GNSS module. Reuse.
https://www.u-blox.com/en/product/neo-m8-series →Honest gap: comma’s public pages don’t name the IMU part — confirm in the github.com/commaai/hardware schematics. Reuse either way.
https://github.com/commaai/hardware →Where openWafer can help
In a driver-assistance stack the compute, CAN interface, GPS, and IMU are settled reuse. The cost-and-differentiation question concentrates in perception: comma does it the standard, proven way — three frame cameras into the Snapdragon’s NPU, reprocessing every pixel of every frame. The frontier option is event-based vision feeding an on-die spiking accelerator — compute only what changes, at lower latency and power — at the cost of custom silicon and a less-proven pipeline. Ship on known ground, or take the frontier for efficiency and differentiation: the system shows the trade, and the goal decides.