Comprehensive explanation of automotive domain controller technology

The smart cockpit domain integrates cockpit electronics such as HUD (head-up display), instrumentation, and in-vehicle infotainment to achieve "one chip, multiple screens". The components of the smart cockpit mainly include full LCD instrumentation, large-screen central control system, in-vehicle infotainment system, head-up display system, streaming media rearview mirror, etc. The cockpit domain controller realizes the integration of head-up display, instrument panel, navigation and other components through Ethernet/MOST/CAN. It not only has traditional cockpit electronic components, but also further integrates the smart driving ADAS system and the vehicle networking V2X system, thereby further optimizing smart driving, vehicle interconnection, infotainment and other functions. The smart cockpit domain can achieve "independent perception" and "interaction mode upgrade". On the one hand, the vehicle has the ability to "perceive" people. On the other hand, the in-vehicle interaction mode has been upgraded from only "physical button interaction" to the coexistence of "touch screen interaction", "voice interaction" and "gesture interaction", which provides a better experience.

The autonomous driving domain enables vehicles to have the capabilities of multi-sensor fusion, positioning, path planning, decision control, image recognition, high-speed communication, and data processing. The autonomous driving domain usually requires multiple external cameras, millimeter-wave radars, lidars, and other on-board sensors to perceive the surrounding environment, and formulate corresponding strategies through sensor data processing and multi-sensor information fusion, as well as appropriate working models, to make decisions and plans. The input of the domain controller is the data of various sensors, and the algorithm processing performed covers the three levels of perception, decision-making, and control. Finally, the output is transmitted to the actuator to control the vehicle's lateral and longitudinal directions. The functions integrated in the autonomous driving domain basically do not involve mechanical components, and interact closely with the cockpit domain. Like the smart cockpit domain, it needs to process a large amount of data and has high requirements for computing power. Therefore, it is necessary to match chips with strong core computing power to meet the computing power requirements of autonomous driving, simplify equipment, and greatly improve the integration of the system.

The body domain will integrate traditional BCM functions and air conditioning damper control, tire pressure monitoring, PEPS, gateway and other functions, and will be the first to merge with the smart cockpit domain in the future. The traditional body controller (BCM) functions mainly include the control of internal/external lights, wipers, windows, doors, electronic steering locks, etc., and communicate with each small node through CAN/LIN. There are many nodes, and the wiring harness design and software control logic are relatively complex. The body domain controller integrates the functions and components of the body nodes, centrally controls each body electronics, and uniformly analyzes and processes the collected information, which is more efficient; technically, the body domain controller requires traditional BCM development experience, hardware integration capabilities, software architecture capabilities, and chip supply capabilities. In the future, it will integrate gateways and some low-level ADAS functions, and will be the first to merge with the smart cockpit domain.

Among them, the smart cockpit domain and the autonomous driving domain are the key to carrying the personalized intelligent experience of the whole vehicle at this stage, and are also the current focus of competition and layout of automakers. These two domains can best reflect the intelligent differences of brands on the whole vehicle side, and at the same time have low dependence on the supply chain of traditional functional systems; they have the fastest iteration at this stage, and their functional development and implementation require a large amount of AI computing, so they have high requirements for the computing power provided by the chip and the underlying algorithms of the operating system; while other domain controllers involve more components related to vehicle safety, so they have higher requirements for functional safety levels, and relatively low requirements for chip computing power and functional intelligence.

From the supply side, in the process of centralization of the overall distributed architecture of automobiles, the supply system of the intelligent cockpit domain upgraded from the central control system and the emerging autonomous driving domain is relatively complete; while other domains are further integration of traditional functional systems, involving many suppliers, which is more likely to cause conflicts of interest, and with the price reduction trend of electronic module components after mass production, the future value increment is limited. In the future, the chassis domain, power domain, and body domain are expected to be further integrated, and "regional domain" integration will be carried out according to the body area, further developing towards a centralized vehicle architecture.

Structurally, a domain controller is mainly composed of hardware (main control chips and components, etc.) and software (bottom-level basic software, middleware, and upper-level application algorithms). The realization of its functions mainly comes from the organic combination of multi-level hardware and software such as the main control chip, software operating system and middleware, and application algorithm software.

1) The domain controller hardware mainly includes the main control chip, PCB board, passive components such as resistors and capacitors, RF components, brackets, heat dissipation components, sealed metal shells and other parts, among which the main control chip is the core component. At present, the main control chips used in the smart cockpit domain and autonomous driving domain, which have higher computing power requirements, are generally composed of MCU chips that provide vehicle control functions and SoC chips including central processing unit CPU, image processor GPU, audio processor DSP, deep learning acceleration unit NPU, image signal processor ISP, application-specific integrated chip ASIC, semi-custom circuit chip FPGA and other components to jointly provide the required computing power to support hardware acceleration requirements in various scenarios. However, due to the relatively low computing power requirements and cost considerations in the chassis domain, body domain, and power domain, their main control chips are still mostly more traditional MCU chips. It is expected that the future trend of the main control chip will be to use SoC chips with higher computing power alone.

2) Software mainly includes the underlying operating system, middleware and development framework, and upper application software layer. The underlying operating system includes the basic automotive operating system, customized operating system, virtual machine, system kernel, etc.

The middle layer and development framework include AP AutoSar, SOA, etc., which are located between the underlying operating system and the upper application software. They shield the application software function implementation layer from the details related to the specific processor and the underlying operating system, and implement the basic services required for interaction with the vehicle network, power supply and other systems. The upper application software layer includes smart cockpit HMI, ADAS/AD algorithms, network connection algorithms, cloud platforms, etc., which actually realize the control of the vehicle and various intelligent functions. Among them, it is expected that the underlying operating system will be the focus of many Tier1s, while the upper application software layer and the middle layer will be the areas where each vehicle manufacturer focuses on research and development to create differentiation.