Arm, a new SW architecture for the automotive industry
Open source reference implementation 'SOAFEE' released for automotive
Support for cloud native environment for SW development


Automotive developers are having a hard time writing code due to the advancement of automotive technologies such as advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), in-vehicle infotainment (IVI), electrified powertrains, and autonomous driving. Computing in cars is becoming more centralized, and the software that makes it possible is becoming more important. In particular, cloud-native development is more suitable for cars than ever.

On the 16th, Arm held an online press conference and announced new automotive technologies developed in collaboration with leading companies across the automotive industry. Arm has unveiled two new hardware reference platforms to accelerate the future of the software-defined automotive industry, along with a new software architecture and reference implementation, SOAFEE (Scalable Open Architecture for Embedded Edge).

To quickly and seamlessly address the software-defined needs of modern automobiles, proven cloud-native technologies that provide a standardized framework to work with the real-time and safety features required for automotive applications are needed. Such a framework can also benefit other industries where real-time and safety are essential, such as robotics and industrial automation.

SOAFEE is the result of leading technology companies in automotive manufacturing, system integration (SI), semiconductors, software, and cloud working together to define a new, open, standards-based architecture for software-defined vehicles.

Additionally, the SOAFEE reference implementation is an architecture defined by a Special Interest Group (SIG) of leading companies and is provided as free, open-source software, aimed at supporting extensive prototyping, workload analysis, and early development.

SOAFEE implements cloud concepts such as container orchestration along with functional safety and real-time capabilities for automobiles. SOAFEE reference materials and reference implementations can be downloaded from the official Arm website.

Also unveiled at the meeting was ADLink’s automotive development platform compatible with ‘Arm SystemReady’. The ‘AVA Developer Platform’ computing system, which is powered by Arm Neoverse-based ‘Ampere Altra’ cores and can be expanded up to 32 cores, and the 80-core development board ‘AVA-AP1’ are currently accepting pre-orders and are scheduled for official release in the fourth quarter of this year.

Arm said that in addition to Amazon Web Services, ADLINK, and Ampere, it is receiving support from companies across the automotive supply chain, including Volkswagen’s Cariad, Apex.AI, Continental, Green Hills Software, Linaro, Marvell, MIH Consortium, Red Hat, SUSE, Woven Planet, and Jing Robotics. “Arm and the Arm ecosystem will provide the resources to realize the cloud-native paradigm for the development of safe and real-time perception vehicles,” said Jeong Seong-hun, FAE director at Arm Korea, who hosted the meeting. “We will make the software-defined vehicle a reality.”