The two companies are looking to create a software stack with the flexibility to meet the current and future needs for automotive and have aligned on this through their active participation in SOAFEE, an initiative that is driving greater collaboration in standardised software development across the automotive market.
The partnership will see PAS and Arm adopt and extend the device virtualization framework VirtIO to decouple automotive software development from hardware and accelerate automotive industry development cycles.
The automotive industry has increasingly consolidated Electronic Control Units (ECUs) into a single powerful ECU such as Cockpit Domain Controller (CDC) or a High-Performance Computer (HPC) and this has made hypervisors and advanced chipsets more important than ever.
However, many automakers and tier-1 suppliers are challenged by vendor-specific proprietary interfaces, which leads to increased costs and delivery time when transitioning from one vendor solution to another.
Both PAS and Arm have recognised the need to shift from a hardware-centric to a software-first development model to address these challenges and by standardising the interfaces between automaker and tier-1 supplier software stacks and the underlying hypervisors and chipsets these run on, it will now be easier for automotive partners to adopt the latest generations of technology.
This new partnership will involve several key initiatives:
- Utilising VirtIO-based Unified HMI to standardise zonal architecture
- PAS and Arm are leveraging VirtIO not only for virtualising devices connected to the central ECU like CDC/HPC, but also for remote devices linked to zonal ECUs. Both have demonstrated a proof-of-concept using PAS’s open-source remote GPU technology, Unified HMI, to implement a Display Zonal Architecture built on Arm. This architecture distributes GPU loads from the central ECU to multiple zonal ECUs, reducing heat generation and harness weight without altering applications running on the central ECU. The flexible partitioning in the Mali-G78AE GPU of Zonal ECUs allocates dedicated hardware resources to different workloads, enabling deterministic graphics performance in a Display Zonal Architecture.
- PAS and Arm are collaborating to provide a SOAFEE Blueprint and reference implementation of this work, aiming to standardise emerging zonal architectures in the automotive industry.
- PAS’s vSkipGen operates on Arm Neoverse-based cloud servers and by maintaining the same Arm CPU architecture and VirtIO device virtualisation framework, this initiative will ensure full environmental parity between cloud virtual hardware and automotive hardware.
- PAS and Arm will collaborate to implement VirtIO in virtual hardware, further bridging the gap between virtual and physical automotive systems.
Currently focused on cockpit use cases like Android Automotive and Automotive Grade Linux, PAS and Arm are now aiming to broaden the VirtIO standards to encompass more automotive applications. This includes standardising interfaces for Real-Time Operating Systems (RTOS) to decouple Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) software from hardware dependencies.
Commenting Masashige Mizuyama, Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer of PAS said, “Our partnership with Arm aims to promote the standardisation of VirtIO and bring this industry reference standard to the next level. It will unlock software potential and serve as a crucial foundation for building the future of automotive technology towards SDV.”
“SDVs continue to be one of the most exciting opportunities for automakers today, but realising this vision demands innovative approaches that allow software developers to begin their work before physical silicon is available,” said Dipti Vachani, senior vice president and general manager, Automotive Line of Business at Arm. “Our partnership with PAS stems from both organisations’ active participation in SOAFEE and builds on a shared goal to reduce fragmentation in the industry through standardisation, which will ultimately accelerate automotive development cycles for our partners.”
