Technical infrastructure of vehicle-mounted SOA

Service-oriented computing represents a prospect and platform that has the potential to change the enterprise. It is a new generation of distributed computing platform and a carrier and application platform for the essential connotation of "software-defined cars". It includes technical architecture, software programs and technical infrastructure, as follows:

· Technical architecture - the basic and fundamental design of the physical aspects of something or technology (software or service) (such as the architectural design blueprints and specifications of high-rise buildings and bridges). Includes four well-known types: component architecture, application architecture, integration architecture, and enterprise technology architecture.

· Technology Infrastructure – The underlying, supporting technology environment, including software and hardware.

· Software Program - A stand-alone system that can be a custom developed application or a commercially available software product.

Software programs or "software-defined applications" reside or run on the technical infrastructure. The basic physical design characteristics of the software programs are characterized by the technical architecture, which depends on and includes relevant parts of the technical infrastructure. The relationship between the three is shown in the figure.

The technical infrastructure and facilities determine the boundaries of the software program instantiation threshold, but due to the implementation of the technical architecture itself and the limitations introduced by the operation of the infrastructure software, the maximum number of instances of the software program that can be called concurrently in real time is smaller than the instances that the infrastructure can support.

From the IT industry's terminology, service-oriented computing includes service-oriented architecture SOA, but in actual application practice, service-oriented architecture SOA is often equated with service-oriented computing. The in-vehicle SOA technical infrastructure represents the environment for deploying in-vehicle software programs, which includes hardware and software environments.

The general form of the hardware environment includes:

ECU, domain controller, regional controller and central computing platform, etc.

Central gateway - routers, firewalls and communication networks

Power supplies, cables, and other computing units, etc.

The general form of the software environment includes:

· operating system

Basic software databases such as CP, AP and system API

Architecting middleware and adapters

Service Agent

Transaction management and message queues

User account management and security technology, etc.

As shown in the figure, in the vehicle system, the hardware environment is mostly presented in the form of physical units such as perception and execution ECU, various domain controllers, central gateways, and central computing platforms. These physical units are supported by multiple real-time control MCU (microprocessor) chips and SOC (system on chip) chips known for AI computing. The platform chips of the physical units are virtually partitioned and securely isolated, and then the appropriate operating system, CP basic software, AP basic software or system API and other software environments are loaded, eventually forming the technical infrastructure of the vehicle SOA to support the operation and function realization of various vehicle application software programs, such as power/chassis/safety applications, autonomous driving, infotainment and body control, as well as perception and execution control.

Among them, the loading of the software environment needs to be realized with the help of the basic technical architecture ecology - the underlying configuration tool. The underlying chip is the hardware foundation for the operation of the upper-level application software. With the development of SOA concepts, artificial intelligence, 5G communications and semiconductor technology, the upper-level application functions that cars can carry are becoming more and more abundant and powerful, and accordingly, the requirements for the underlying chips are also getting higher and higher.

The underlying chips can be divided into the following categories based on their functional focus:

MCU: Microcontroller 

ISP: Image Processor

GPU: Graphics Processing Unit 

CPU: Central Processing Unit

NPU: Neural Network Processor

FPGA: Field Programmable Array

DSP: Digital Signal Processing 

sOC: System on Chip

In order to decouple the upper-level application software from the underlying chips and provide flexible scalability, a layered approach and structure is generally used between the upper-level application software and the underlying chips to gradually build the system basic software from the bottom up.