Hi, and welcome to the Arm 'What is' program series. In each episode, we explore a tech
topic to give you insight and perspective into some of today's hottest design trends.
I'm Brian Fuller, editor-in-chief at Arm and today we're going to find out what is
a software-defined vehicle?
And to help us with that, I want to introduce Robert Day,
director automotive partnerships for North America with Arm. When he's not helping us
understand what is a software-defined vehicle, he likes to spend his pandemic life in the kitchen,
experimenting with new flavors for his ever broadening range of culinary creations.
So let's get started. Robert, what exactly is a software-defined vehicle?
Hello, Brian. So traditionally the software in the vehicle has been very closely tied to
the hardware module or electronic control unit, or ECU, that's doing a very specific function
in the car. The software typically does not evolve much through the lifetime of the vehicle
and any necessary updates involve a trip to the dealership.
For the software-defined vehicle, the functions in the car are now being defined by software
rather than specific hardware modules, rather like the applications that we run on our smartphones or
computers. This means these functions can evolve and improve through the lifetime of the vehicle
with the possibility to even add new functions through software.
Some of the moves to software-defined is to meet the needs of our generation's
technology users, who expect that software will be upgraded over the lifetime of the
hardware it runs on, but we'll also make it easier for the automakers themselves
to manage the feature capabilities of a vehicle, upsells features to existing
customers, and then have the same features and functions over their entire vehicle range.
Fascinating. So Robert, where are we in terms of the evolution
of software-defined vehicle technologies?
So we're kind of really at the beginning, we're starting to see some software-defined functions
coming into more of the comfort functions of our vehicles, like the infotainment or
navigation systems. And there's now a shift to having different domains in a vehicle,
having their capabilities defined more by software. So think things
like autonomous drive functions or, you know, electric vehicle management functions.
The next big step is where those different software functions will actually co-exist on a
large central computer, rather like the vehicle's brain. Again, the analogy with our computers and
smartphones that have the performance to run multiple applications simultaneously.
Now, is this something that's easy to implement
from a technology standpoint or there are some tricks to it.
Yeah, there's always tricks to it, Brian, but the hardware and the software methodologies,
so they exist today to actually deploy software-defined functions.
Think about all the applications that we run in the cloud, for example,
those software functions are spun up when we need them. And the same server can be
running many different applications simultaneously for different users.
Where it gets tricky though, is that the car is not the cloud and has requirements
for things like safety, real-time response that the cloud typically doesn't worry about.
So a cloud native in a development environment is actually a good starting point for developing
and deploying software functions, but it needs to understand the environment and the
requirements that the vehicle functions have. That's why the industry is coming
together with some new initiatives to make this possible across the automotive value chain.
The SOAFEE initiative that was launched last year is going to take cloud native standards
and add the safety and real-time functionality to enable deployment from the cloud to the vehicle.
And there's a newly launched SDV project under the eclipse foundation,
which will build on that to provide a full open source software-defined vehicle stack.
So lots going on there. Robert, how do you see software-defined
vehicle technology evolving in the next, say two to three years.
So I think the vehicle architecture itself is going to evolve and with that, so will
the software-defined technology. So we'll see a shift from application specific domains to more
of a zonal architecture where each different area of vehicle will have a zonal controller
that will communicate to the central computer that will run these software-defined functions.
We'll see much more frequent updates and upgrades to the software functions. And these will be done
over the air and not require regular visits to the dealer. And then these upgrades will introduce
more intelligence to the vehicle, better safety through increased ADAS and autonomous functions,
and better efficiency through engine management upgrades and the next wave of EV management.
Well, thanks Robert. I'm looking forward to a world in which cars are much more
intelligent, safe and efficient. Now check out all our other 'What is' episodes here, and be sure to
subscribe to this channel because we'll be adding more as the year progresses. Thanks for listening!