On September 24, Intel and FAW Group held a technology experience day at the NBD headquarters of FAW Group in Changchun. At the event, Intel exhibited a series of leading technologies and products in the field of automotive electronics, and introduced the cooperation progress of Tongqi Group. Among them, the topic of software-defined vehicles has attracted much attention.
Break the industry predicament
In recent years, the automobile industry is entering a period of major transformation. At the same time, the “new four modernizations” of electrification, intelligence, networking and sharing of the automobile industry have also entered into reality from the concept. However, in this process, how to meet the new needs of users and find a solution to adapt to the future development of the automotive industry is a difficult problem for the entire industry. After exploration, the automotive industry has gradually reached a consensus in recent years that “software-defined vehicles” are the future development direction.
Software-defined vehicles first define the infrastructure of the vehicle. To realize software-defined vehicles, the adjustment of the Electronic architecture of the vehicle is particularly important. In the future car, only by making all electronic devices issue instructions through a unified central controller, and then externally executing the control to perform actions, can a true software-defined car be realized.
Under this concept, the car can overlay the domain control layer and application layer on top of the traditional controller. The domain control layer can coordinate and control multiple low-level controllers uniformly, while the top-level application layer can provide more possibilities for the car. Among them, all functions of the domain control layer and the application layer are defined by software, and because of this, software-defined cars can provide more possibilities for cars.
In software-defined cars, whether it is the application of the in-vehicle entertainment system, the realization of assisted driving, or the integration of functions such as remote control and voice interaction, the car becomes more “warm”, which is also conducive to future autonomous driving and even passenger economy. development is ready.
Explore future directions
When it comes to FAW, many people’s impression of it still stays in the cognition of the old domestic car companies. However, in fact, as early as three years ago, FAW and Intel started the exploration of software-defined vehicles in the forefront of the world.
In 2016, Intel, FAW-Hongqi and Neusoft jointly released the “Intelligent Driving Platform”. This intelligent cockpit platform is based on the Intel Atom in-vehicle processor Apollo Lake, which can integrate in-vehicle entertainment system, digital instrument, rear seat entertainment and advanced driver assistance system (ADAS), providing more possibilities for intelligent cockpit products sex. After three years of joint development, at present, FAW-Hongqi has achieved mass production of three models equipped with this platform.
Today’s auto market is becoming increasingly competitive. In order to provide consumers with a more comfortable and modern driving experience, smart cockpits have become a major competitive advantage for auto manufacturers. In addition, FAW also found that software-defined vehicles can effectively shorten the development cycle and reduce development costs.
When talking about the benefits of software-defined vehicles to car manufacturers, Li Fengjun, president of FAW Group Intelligent Networking Development Institute, mentioned: “In the current automobile development process, if you want to add a function, you need to change multiple controllers, which will It brings problems such as coordination of multiple suppliers, long-term cycle, high failure rate risk, etc. In software-defined vehicles, the vehicle EE architecture will develop into domain control, central computing platform control, and layered development of underlying software and hardware and upper-level applications. , adding functions only need to change the software, which may be realized through OTA, the development cost will be greatly reduced, and it will also bring users a brand new driving experience.”
Open the era of software-defined cars
The core power of software lies in computing power, so the realization of software-defined cars needs to be driven by stronger computing power, which is Intel’s strength. At the same time, in the field of software-defined cars, Intel already has a series of leading technologies and solutions from processors to virtualization technology to operating system support. Currently, with these leading technologies, Intel is working with more and more partners to promote this new revolution with software-defined vehicles as the main line.
Apollo Lake Processor: The Intel Atom processor A3900 series is a processor specially designed for in-vehicle experience. This series of processors has powerful computing power and load integration capabilities to support in-vehicle infotainment systems, digital instrumentation, rear seat entertainment and advanced driver assistance systems. Up to now, many automakers including BMW and Tesla have mass-produced the next-generation entertainment and instrumentation systems based on Apollo Lake. In China, more than five Chinese automakers will mass-produce new-generation models equipped with Apollo Lake in 2019 and 2020. It is predicted that by 2020, Apollo Lake will occupy 30% to 40% of the global market share.
ACRN virtualization: ACRN virtualization software, an open source project under the Linux Foundation, is a flexible, lightweight, virtualization reference software. Designed with real-time and critical safety in mind, ACRN is optimized for streamlined embedded development such as automotive or IoT. Since 2017, Intel has invested more than 100 engineers to participate in the development of the ACRN virtualization open source platform. As of now, the virtualization products of the ACRN in-vehicle version have been mass-produced.
ECU fusion reference solution: As multi-core high computing power microcontroller units (MCUs) or system integrated chips (SoCs) are more and more applied to in-vehicle electrical and electronic systems, more computing and control tasks are performed. Centralized processing has become the mainstream trend. In this centralized framework, a single ECU with stronger computing power replaces multiple ECUs in the past, supplemented by virtualization and hardware isolation technology, which can integrate more different computing and control tasks, significantly reducing the system cost. hardware cost and software complexity and dependencies.
Android Q: In the field of in-vehicle infotainment systems, Intel and Google have long maintained close cooperation in the research and development of in-vehicle infotainment systems. As the most mainstream in-vehicle entertainment system, Android system has increasingly become the basic system of intelligent cockpit central control solutions.
Xu Weijie, general manager of Intel’s Automotive Product Sales Division in China, said: “There is no doubt that software-defined vehicles are the future development direction of the automotive industry. In the past three years, we are very pleased that the cooperation with Tongqi in the field of software-defined vehicles has achieved many outstanding achievements. Results. At present, Intel has been able to provide end-to-end software-defined automotive solutions from automotive, network to cloud; at the same time, Intel is also working with experts in the automotive, technology industry, and other fields, including FAW, to explore and Addressing new challenges in the new field of software-defined vehicles.”
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