Cars have changed because of the advent of service-oriented gateways! | 『Xiaozhi×Partners』Talk Show
The theme of the first TALK SHOW is "Service-Oriented Gateway Empowers the Next-Generation Vehicle Architecture": Liu Fang, General Manager of NXP's Automotive Electronics Business in Greater China, and Ni Zhigang, Director of Connectivity and Security Business Unit in Asia Pacific at Aptiv, conducted in-depth analysis and discussion on the changes and opportunities that service-oriented gateways bring to the next-generation vehicle architecture from the perspectives of chip providers and automotive Tier 1 respectively.
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As more and more vehicles are connected to the cloud, vehicle data is growing exponentially, which poses a challenge to the ability of vehicles to transmit and process this massive amount of data.
In this process, the traditional distributed vehicle architecture is also approaching its architectural limit, and actively exploring the transformation of the next generation of vehicle architecture has become an important proposition for domestic and foreign car manufacturers.
The innovation of vehicle architecture will inevitably trigger a series of chain reactions on the technical side, the most direct of which is the vehicle network architecture and its related hardware and software. Service-oriented gateway is one of the key driving factors.
In this episode of the "Xiaozhi x Friends" Talkshow
Wonderful opinions from industry leaders
We summarize as follows
Let's watch together
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1
The keyword of the automotive revolution is "service", what are the challenges?
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"The essence of intelligent connectivity is 'service-oriented'." Liu Fang, general manager of NXP's automotive electronics business in Greater China, emphasized that this service-oriented trend will bring challenges and innovations in all related architectures, from software to hardware, to the overall vehicle system and future design. This is brand new for the entire automotive industry.
Liu Fang pointed out that in the process of the entire industry's advancement towards intelligent networking, everyone focuses on services and data, but the real landing place is the car factory. Car factories face many challenges from the technical and market levels in this process, and how to quickly promote the implementation and realization of this transformation requires the joint efforts of the entire industry chain.
In this process, more and more challenges and requirements are broken down into various technical levels.
Ni Zhigang, director of the Asia Pacific Connectivity and Security Business Unit at Aptiv, pointed out that "service" is not a new concept. However, when it comes to cars, since the original systems in the car are independent, such as ESP, ABS or ADAS cameras and other functions, they were previously completed by suppliers at one time. For example, Tier 1 suppliers can combine a whole set of actuators, sensors, controllers and other components into a solid thing. However, with the trend of intelligent networking of automobiles, the biggest problem of this system - inflexibility, is becoming more and more its pain point. "It is difficult to expand new functions, and it will be very difficult to do OTA upgrades in the future." Ni Zhigang pointed out.
Does this mean that modern cars need some fundamental reconstruction? These problems and challenges are naturally what hardware manufacturers and Tire1 companies need to deal with together with car manufacturers.
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What does the “service-oriented” nature of cars really mean?
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What does the “service-oriented” nature of cars really mean?
When it comes to the service functions of cars, Liu Fang believes that they can be viewed from two aspects. Generally speaking, they are cloud-based services, such as travel services, supporting services for autonomous driving, including telematics services, maps, etc.
But looking at the hardware itself from another perspective, Liu Fang pointed out that it may come more from the concept of "microservices" in the software design architecture of the IT industry in the past.
"It is precisely such a microservice that drives the update of the electronic and electrical architecture." Liu Fang pointed out that this means that the relatively flat structure of the automotive industry in the past, such as the functions of independent ECUs, can become a service for the entire system. In other words, the single function of the ECU is no longer limited to a closed and isolated network. It can share its service functions with service nodes in other domains, and then form a service combination or a process through these sub-nodes.
Ni Zhigang explained that since traditional cars do not have a so-called service backbone network, their main information is based on each domain to make a closed structure, and the backbone of this structure is CAN. CAN is a typical signal-based fixed communication mode, and its biggest problem is that it has poor adaptability. "To add new functions to such a fixed structure, the design difficulty increases exponentially." Ni Zhigang said that because the biggest problem with this kind of design based on a fixed signal-based matrix is that it is very painful to make changes after the design is completed. "Often a change involves a lot of counterparts, and each change needs to be tested step by step, which invisibly increases a lot of time and cost."
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How does a service-oriented gateway enable vehicle architecture upgrades?
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How does a service-oriented gateway enable vehicle architecture upgrades?
Unlike traditional gateways, service-oriented gateways are a new software-based, service-centric architecture in which vehicles can receive over-the-air (OTA) updates from the cloud to adjust the vehicle based on owner preferences, improve vehicle performance, and deliver new services that will bring significant advantages to owners, automakers, and related third parties.
Liu Fang believes that a future trend is to further weaken the isolation of hardware and software, and hardware and software will be in a loosely coupled state in the future, which will be more free and scalable. "In other words, the addition and iteration of a series of service functions can be achieved through software-defined cars, so a completely different car can be designed through the cloud."
The design based on service-oriented architecture is actually a process of finding a balance between the traditional hardware design system and the agile software design system. This will bring new benefits and advantages to all parties in the industry chain, including manufacturers. For example, the integration of each ECU and combining those with similar functions can reduce the cost of the ECU and thus reduce the increase in the cost of the entire vehicle.
Ni Zhigang gave an example, such a centralized service-oriented vehicle architecture has brought about a great improvement in the wiring harness inside the car - the original concept of the wiring harness for the entire vehicle has gradually changed to the concept of Zone, which has shortened the wiring harness from the original 5 meters in length for the entire vehicle to 2 meters or 1 meter.
This change in detail is of great significance to automobile manufacturing, and it can solve a major bottleneck in current automobile manufacturing - the automated installation of wiring harnesses. You must know that in the already highly automated field of automobile manufacturing, the only link that currently requires a lot of manual operation is the installation of wiring harnesses. Because the wiring harnesses are very soft and long, they have to be manually drilled in for installation, which greatly affects the production rhythm and thus the production capacity of the car factory. Even Tesla once regarded it as the biggest problem. "The shortening of the wiring harness means that many new wiring harness forms can be created." Ni Zhigang introduced, such as flat wires (FFC) and hard structural wires, so that the wiring harnesses can be pre-installed on a zone controller, and the wiring harnesses can be installed automatically.
The global automotive electronic and electrical architecture network is currently being upgraded, and domestic and foreign industries are jointly exploring where the demand lies. In this process, the Chinese market is gradually taking the lead in many aspects.
"We have seen that in the Chinese market, some commonalities of local demands are increasingly evident, which is ahead of foreign OEMs," Liu Fang revealed. In fact, the global reference design provided by NXP for service-oriented gateways was developed by the Chinese team, and the reference design largely absorbed demands not from foreign OEMs, but from common demands that have begun to form in China. "Chinese OEMs are very strong in their spontaneous pursuit of innovation and upgrading, and are actively seeking breakthroughs in both technology upgrades and business transformation. This is a very important driving factor for the transformation of the entire industry," Liu Fang said.
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