The companies are collaborating on developing a secure automotive platform that will target next-generation zonal E/E architecture, enabling commercial deployment for software-defined and service-oriented vehicles.
The platform will provide OEMs and Tier-1 suppliers with a flexible, efficient solution that will be designed to overcome current technological challenges such as integrating the hardware and software required for delivering advanced features and functionalities for the next generation of vehicles.
The unified platform will target new zonal vehicle architectures that consolidate services that have traditionally been performed by multiple, dedicated functional domain platforms. This will simplify wiring harnesses which lowers vehicle weight and cost and enable scalability and enhancements in the future through software over-the-air updates.
“NXP’s collaboration with GuardKnox and Green Hills addresses key challenges of the automotive industry’s dramatic shift from horsepower to compute power to drive future software-centric vehicles,” said Brian Carlson, Global Marketing Director for Vehicle Control and Networking Solutions at NXP. “This platform unleashes the innovation of the S32G vehicle network processor to meet the demanding processing and networking needs of domain and zonal vehicle architectures coupled with secure, service-oriented software.”
Based on NXP’s S32G vehicle network processor and the Green Hills INTEGRITY safe and secure separation kernel and secure hypervisor (Multivisor), GuardKnox will expand and optimise its offerings for high-performance automotive ECU connectivity. The platform will retain GuardKnox’s mixed-criticality features of Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) – ensuring a consolidated, scalable, dynamic, and secure-by-design product for the automotive industry.
The platform is intended for a wide range of new vehicle services such as in-vehicle app stores, vehicle personalisation, immersive infotainment systems, and Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS). It will be able to adapt to customer needs while remaining agnostic to network topology. The platform is a general-purpose compute element with automotive network interfaces, serving as a baseline vehicle server. It can also serve as a high-performance domain controller for present-day architectures, designed to host applications, provide extra services, additional functionality, and consolidation of other external hardware.
