The automotive industry is undergoing disruptive change and manufacturers must rely on a trusted partner in building next-generation automotive architectures. The classic vehicle is being transformed into a software-defined Internet of Things (IoT) device. Personalization, connectivity, and mobility-as-a-service are becoming more important for drivers and passengers. The amount of software in vehicles will continue to increase. The future of driving depends on re-designing the core architecture of the car and the software that powers it. Developments such as connectivity, smart devices, e-mobility, and automated driving place high demands on the in-vehicle network architecture.

Automated driving functions, in particular, call for incredibly powerful electronic control units (ECUs). The more driving tasks the software assumes and the more connections there are to the outside world, the greater the demand on these ECUs.

Functional safety and security create additional requirements for future software architectures. Safety systems must work reliably to ensure human safety, even in the case of a malfunction or an accident.

To accommodate these increasing demands and changing needs, the vehicle architecture is moving from complex distributed systems to consolidated, high-performance central and zonal architectures. Future platforms will communicate via service-orientated paradigms that allow flexible updating and localization.

Adaptive AUTOSAR, where safety meets performance

To enable highly automated and connected driving, car makers are consolidating up to 100 single ECUs into a centralized functional architecture with just five to ten embedded performance controllers at its core. To make this possible, car makers are in need of new software to leverage the capabilities of powerful multi-core processors.