Intel and FAW Group work together to lead a new revolution in the automotive industry

On September 24, Intel and FAW Group held a technology experience day event at FAW Group's NBD headquarters in Changchun. At the event, Intel exhibited a series of leading technologies and products in the field of automotive electronics and introduced the progress of cooperation with FAW Group. Among them, the topic of software-defined cars attracted much attention.

Breaking the industry dilemma

In recent years, the automotive industry is entering a major transformation period. At the same time, the "four new trends" of electrification, intelligence, networking and sharing in the automotive industry have also begun to move from concept to reality. However, in this process, how to meet the new needs of users and find solutions that adapt to the future development of the automotive industry is a difficult problem facing the entire industry. After exploration, the automotive industry has gradually reached a consensus in recent years that "software-defined cars" should be the future development direction.

Software-defined cars first define the basic architecture of the entire vehicle. To achieve software-defined cars, the adjustment of the electronic architecture of the entire vehicle is particularly important. In future cars, only when all electronic devices issue instructions through a unified central controller and then execute actions through external execution controls can a true software-defined car be realized.

Under this concept, a car can have a domain control layer and an application layer superimposed on the traditional controller. The domain control layer can coordinate and control multiple underlying controllers, while the top 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 it is for this reason that software-defined cars can provide more possibilities for cars.

In software-defined cars, whether it is the application of in-car entertainment systems, the realization of assisted driving, or the integration of functions such as remote control and voice interaction, all make cars more "warm" and prepare for the future development of autonomous driving and even passenger economy.

Explore future directions

When it comes to FAW, many people still think of it as a well-established domestic automaker. However, in fact, as early as three years ago, FAW and Intel began to explore software-defined cars at the forefront of the world.

In 2016, Intel, FAW Hongqi and Neusoft jointly launched the "Intelligent Driving Platform". This intelligent cockpit platform is based on the Intel® Atom™ automotive processor Apollo Lake, which integrates the in-vehicle entertainment system, digital instrument, rear seat entertainment and advanced driver assistance system (ADAS) to provide more possibilities for intelligent cockpit products. After three years of joint development, FAW Hongqi has now put three models equipped with this platform into mass production.

Today's automobile market is becoming increasingly competitive. In order to provide consumers with a more comfortable and modern driving experience, equipping smart cockpits has become a major competitive advantage for automobile manufacturers. In addition, FAW has also found that software-defined cars can effectively shorten the development cycle and reduce development costs.

When talking about the benefits of software-defined cars for car manufacturers, Li Fengjun, director of the Intelligent Connected Vehicle Development Institute of FAW Group, mentioned: "In the current car development process, if you want to add a function, you need to change multiple controllers, which will bring problems such as coordination among multiple suppliers, long cycles, and high failure rate risks. In software-defined cars, the EE architecture of the entire vehicle will develop into domain control and central computing platform control, and the underlying hardware and software and upper-level applications will be developed in layers. Adding functions only requires changing the software, which may be achieved through OTA. The development cost will be greatly reduced, and it will also bring users a brand new driving experience."

Opening the era of software-defined cars

The core driving force of software lies in computing power, so the realization of software-defined cars also requires stronger computing power, which is exactly where Intel's strengths lie. 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, Intel is relying on these leading technologies and working with more and more partners to promote this new transformation with software-defined cars as the main line.

Apollo Lake processor: The Intel Atom® processor A3900 series is a processor designed specifically for the in-vehicle experience. This series of processors has powerful computing power and load integration capabilities, and can support in-vehicle infotainment systems, digital instruments, rear-seat entertainment, and advanced driver assistance systems. So far, many automakers, including BMW and Tesla, have mass-produced next-generation entertainment and instrumentation systems based on Apollo Lake. In China, more than 5 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 is an open source project under the Linux Foundation. It is a flexible, lightweight, virtualization reference software. ACRN is designed with real-time and critical safety as the starting point, and is optimized for streamlined embedded development such as automobiles or the Internet of Things. Since 2017, Intel has invested more than 100 engineers in the development of the ACRN virtualization open source platform. So far, the ACRN automotive version of the virtualization product has been mass-produced.

ECU Fusion Reference Solution: As multi-core high-computing microcontroller units (MCUs) or system-on-chips (SoCs) are increasingly used in in-vehicle electronic and electrical systems, centralizing more computing and control tasks has become a mainstream trend. In this centralized framework, a single ECU with stronger computing power replaces multiple ECUs, and with the help of virtualization and hardware isolation technology, more different computing and control tasks can be integrated together, significantly reducing the system's hardware cost and software complexity and dependency.

Android Q: In the field of in-vehicle infotainment systems, Intel and Google have maintained close cooperation in the research and development of in-vehicle infotainment systems for a long time. As the most mainstream in-vehicle entertainment system, the Android system has increasingly become the basic system for 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 cars are the future development direction of the automotive industry. Over the past three years, we are very pleased that our cooperation with FAW in the field of software-defined cars has achieved many excellent results. Currently, Intel is able to provide end-to-end software-defined car solutions from cars, networks to the cloud; at the same time, Intel is also working with experts in the automotive, technology and other fields, including FAW, to explore and respond to new challenges in this new field of software-defined cars."