Automotive silicon leader NXP Semiconductors announced the Open S32 CoreRide™ Platform, which aims to speed the development of complex vehicle systems. The shift to software-defined vehicles (SDVs) has been given an incredible boost with this announcement, and Sonatus is pleased to be a part of it.
Integration of vehicle systems requires a tight collaboration between hardware and software, spanning multiple companies including OEMs, tier-1s, and third-party software companies. With this platform, NXP is bringing together industry leaders that provide pre-integrated software that can reduce integration complexity and cost, and improve scalability and time-to-market.
Sonatus and NXP are long-time partners whose respective products are already integrated together in high-volume production vehicles. The Open S32 CoreRide Platform allows us to further streamline the adoption of Sonatus alongside NXP and deliver the next wave of compelling SDVs.
The importance of a flexible foundation for SDVs
The promise of SDVs requires vehicles that build in rich extensibility and configurability. Historically, vehicles have been composed of many fixed-function ECUs and static hard-wired networks that are difficult to evolve and expensive to build and maintain. SDVs in contrast need to be built on a flexible foundation that enables continuous and rapid innovations throughout the vehicle lifecycle, especially during post-production. Integral to this change is the separation of hardware and software, which allows multiple vehicle functions to be consolidated into more powerful compute platforms for a more optimized, simpler and versatile software foundation.
Similarly, SDVs require software-defined networks with separate control and data planes to manage, configure, and secure vehicle networks more easily. NXP vehicle processor solutions—especially the S32 family—are tailor-made to enable future-proof extensibility and coexistence of workloads, as well as manageability and flexibility of vehicle networks. Sonatus software on top of NXP hardware directly implements many of these critical capabilities, primarily through our Sonatus Foundation, which delivers configurable network, data, compute, and security management for vehicles. It enables OEMs to evolve their vehicle E/E architectures to incorporate Automotive Ethernet, application containers, SOA services, and dynamic data management. Foundation’s in-vehicle software is coupled with cloud-based management capabilities to allow OEMs to continuously monitor, adapt, and reconfigure the vehicle software infrastructure for optimal performance and enhancements at any point in the vehicle lifecycle. Vehicle networks are a critical component to enable software defined vehicles. A Sonatus whitepaper was recently released that explains how Modern Networks are the Backbone of Software-Defined Vehicles.
Accelerating time-to-market with proven integration with NXP S32G
One of the many goals of the CoreRide platform is to accelerate the distribution of foundational hardware and software to enable OEMs to deploy higher levels of software more quickly. This aligns perfectly with Sonatus’s core mission to support OEMs by providing the necessary foundational software elements so they can focus on delivering differentiated features and functions to their customers.
Our software has been deployed in production in over a dozen vehicle models and more than 1 million vehicles (and counting)—most of them aligned to the S32G vehicle processors. Subsequent OEM deployments can benefit from our combined years of experience and tight working relationship to deploy SDV solutions to market quickly and reliably.
Looking forward to NXP S32N
As we look to the future, NXP is enriching its vehicle processor family with even more powerful solutions that further advance the goal of highly advanced SDVs. The new NXP S32N adds significant new capabilities ranging from advanced high-speed networking, increased integration of real-time processing, network acceleration, enhanced cybersecurity, AI/ML acceleration, and much more. In our existing collaboration with NXP, we already take advantage of specific NXP S32 platform features, including packet acceleration and other important network management capabilities to name a few. S32N will take that integration to the next level. Sonatus is already working with NXP to extend our existing software to take full advantage of many of the new powerful functions provided by this new industry-leading platform.
The journey ahead will require a concerted effort spanning hardware and software. Sonatus is proud to be an integral part of the NXP Open S32 CoreRide platform to accelerate the shift to software defined vehicles
