Arm and Cadence Push Software-Defined Vehicle Development Forward

One of the largest and most important changes happening to the automotive business is the move to the idea of a software-defined vehicle (SDV). As exciting as the shift may be, however, it’s also proven to be one of the most problematic as well, particularly given the timing challenges that automakers already face. Because of the nature of how cars are designed and developed, there’s typically multiple years that pass between the initial concept for a vehicle and the time it’s completed.

With the move towards a more “computerized” and software driven version of a vehicle, that development period has started to grow even longer. The reason? Because carmakers had to wait for the semiconductor chips that were at the heart of these new SDVs to be completed before they could start working on writing the millions of lines of software code that were going to run on them. Practically speaking, that meant that by the time these modern cars were coming out, they could be based on chip technology that was 3-5 years old.

In order to fix this problem, it was necessary to create a paradigm shift in the automobile design process. That’s exactly what chip architecture company Arm just unveiled, in conjunction with some partner companies like Cadence Design Systems, building and extending its 20+-year run as a critical supplier to the car industry. Essentially, with its new virtual automotive platform, Arm is creating a “digital twin” of its automotive chip architectures that can run in the cloud as soon as the IP (Intellectual Property) for these semiconductor designs are completed. The practical result is that carmakers and other automotive suppliers can shave as much as two years off the development process. They can do so by allowing the software for these vehicles to start being coded on these digital twins at a significantly earlier date than they had previously been able to. Given how competitive the automotive market has become—especially with the entrance of many more tech-focused companies into the industry—this sped up development time is expected to have a big impact on the car brands and Tier 1 suppliers that choose to leverage it. Plus, it allows more advanced technologies to get into our cars at a faster pace.

The way that automotive chipmakers who leverage Arm’s chip architectures into their products (including companies such as Qualcomm, Nvidia, and Renesas among others) have typically created their own semiconductor designs is to take Arm’s latest IP and then create their own custom designs from those shared architectures. What Arm has done now is replicated these future designs in software and run them on their more advanced server-based Neoverse designs, such as AWS’ Graviton chip. This gives carmakers the ability to write software and test it on software duplicates (“digital twins”) of their new automotive enhanced (AE) chip architectures well before the finished chips that will eventually go into their cars are completed. This “shift left” concept makes it easier for software-defined vehicle designs to get started sooner.

Speaking of Neoverse, one of the other elements that Arm unveiled is a version of its more powerful Neoverse designs called the Neoverse V3AE that’s been optimized for the redundancy and reliability requirements of the automotive market. Specifically, these news designs meet the critical ASIL B and ASIL D vehicle standards. Because they essentially enable the creation of server-class CPUs for cars, they offer up the potential to create more capable assisted and autonomous driving features. These chips are the first for the automotive market to support the company’s latest V9 CPU architecture which adds several important security capabilities to the design. Arm also released their first V9-based Cortex A processor designs and the first 64-bit R series CPU, the R82AE which is designed for the real-time operations that cars require, including things like steering assist, automated braking, etc.

Looking ahead, Arm also announced that it will be expanding its Compute Subsystems (CSS) features and will be offering complete system design capabilities for the automotive market in 2025. What this means in real-world terms is that Arm licensees will be able to more easily and more quickly design complete automotive chiplet designs that integrate not only Arm CPU and other co-processor elements but things like a security island for hardened designs, additional connections to sensors and other I/O devices, and much more. Arm started this system design concept for the server market to speed up the process of creating complete server SOCs and they’re now planning to bring it to automotive as well.

Of course, another critical part of the chip design process are the EDA (Electronic Design Automation) tools that semiconductor designers use to create their own designs. In that light, Cadence simultaneously announced a new agreement with Arm that will extend the capabilities of several of their tools to support these new designs. The latest version of Cadence’s Helium Virtual and Hybrid Studio will let automotive manufacturers and their chip suppliers create chiplet designs that leverage Arm’s digital twin architectures, with an initial focus on more advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) applications. In addition, Cadence is bringing some of its own IP targeted at IO and interconnect technologies like UCIe (Universal Chiplet Interconnect Express) to speed up the chiplet design process even further. Just as chiplet-based semiconductor designs have become the modern standard for PCs, smartphones and other devices, so too have they quickly become the expected standard for the automotive market.

Cadence is also bringing in some AI-focused IP in the form of its Neo NPU and Neuroweave software development kit (SDK) to make the ADAS and autonomous driving features even smarter and more capable.

Together, the combination of these Arm and Cadence technologies are expected to make the process of designing SDVs faster, easier and more efficient. In an era when car buyers are eager for the more advanced features that these kinds of vehicles can offer and car makers are scrambling to meet those needs, these developments represent an important and tangible step forward.                                 

Bob O’Donnell is the president and chief analyst of TECHnalysis Research, LLC a market research firm that provides strategic consulting and market research services to the technology industry and professional financial community. You can follow him on LinkedIn at Bob O’Donnell or on Twitter @bobodtech.