Background: Software Defined Vehicles

Products have been revolutionized by the decoupling of software from hardware. This shift has allowed products to be more easily updated, upgraded, and connected to the internet, paving the way for new business models.

In the automotive industry functional safety is critical. Unlike infotainment systems that are often frequently updated, core vehicle functions like braking, demand high reliability. The Automotive industry faces these challenges:

1. Consumer Expectations: Customers want their in-car experience to mirror their mobile devices, necessitating integration with apps and mobile operating systems like Android and iOS.

2. Autonomous Driving: The move towards self-driving vehicles requires advanced AI and machine learning technologies.

3. Environmental Regulations: Varying regulations and climate change concerns drive the shift to electric vehicles.

4. Connectivity: Always-connected vehicles open up continuous communication and new after-sales opportunities for manufacturers.

These items, often referred to as ACES (Autonomous driving, Connected cars, Electrified vehicles, and Shared mobility), require changes in vehicle and backend architecture. These software innovations mark a shift in value creation from hardware to software. The Software-Defined Vehicle (SDV) concept embodies this change, separating hardware from software, enabling upgrades, autonomy, constant connectivity, and new service-based models.

Fundamental Concepts of Software-Defined Vehicles

To enable hardware-software decoupling, changes in vehicle electrical/electronic (E/E) architecture are required. The evolution from distributed to zonal and central architectures is driven by the need for more powerful computing resources, like High-Performance Computers (HPC), which are central to SDV. These architectures reduce wiring complexity, weight, and enhance the flexibility for software updates and upgrades.

HPCs, connected to in-vehicle networks, consolidate software across different vehicle domains and support over-the-air updates. They also enable service-oriented communication, crucial for integrating microservices in vehicles.

The hybrid communication architecture of SDVs combines traditional signal-based communication for safety-critical functions with service-oriented communication for more flexible software designs. Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) systems, relying on smart sensors, AI, and high bandwidth, are a key example of this evolution.

Software Architecture Evolution

The automotive industry has invested in standards like AUTOSAR, which standardizes ECU software architecture, enabling reuse and exchangeability. AUTOSAR Classic supports signal-based communication, while AUTOSAR Adaptive is more suited for high-performance systems and supports service-based communication and over-the-air updates.

Automotive software development remains complex due to functional safety requirements. To streamline development, automakers are creating full software platforms for specific hardware configurations, sometimes referred to as automotive operating systems. These platforms include bootloaders, hypervisors, device drivers, operating systems, middleware, and more, working together to realize the vision of the software-defined vehicle.

How do IBM Engineering Solutions fit in?

IBM Engineering solutions can play a important role in the movement towards a software-defined vehicle (SDV) by addressing the complex challenges involved in developing and managing the vast amounts of software required for modern vehicles. Here’s how:

1. Systems Engineering and Requirements Management

Comprehensive Requirements Traceability: IBM Engineering solutions ensure that all software and hardware requirements are captured, managed, and traced throughout the vehicle development lifecycle. This is crucial for aligning the diverse components and subsystems in an SDV, ensuring that software meets stringent safety and performance standards.

Standards Compliance: The platform helps ensure compliance with industry standards like ISO 26262 (functional safety), AUTOSAR (automotive open system architecture), and other regulations essential for vehicle development, reducing the risk of costly errors.

2. Agile and Scalable Development

Agile and DevOps Integration: IBM Engineering solutions support agile methodologies and DevOps practices, enabling rapid iteration and continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipelines. This is vital for SDVs, where software updates and new features are continuously delivered over the vehicle’s lifetime.

Collaboration Across Teams: The tools facilitate collaboration between cross-functional teams, including software developers, systems engineers, and hardware designers, ensuring a cohesive approach to building the SDV.

3. Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE)

Simulation and Modeling: IBM’s MBSE tools allow for the creation of detailed simulations and models of the vehicle’s software and hardware systems. These models can be tested and validated virtually, reducing the need for physical prototypes and accelerating development timelines.

Digital Twins: The ability to create digital twins of vehicle components allows for real-time monitoring and predictive maintenance, which is crucial for the dynamic and adaptive nature of SDVs.

4. Configuration and Change Management

Version Control: IBM Engineering solutions offer robust configuration and change management capabilities, ensuring that all changes are tracked, documented, and can be rolled back if necessary. This is particularly important in SDVs, where software updates can impact safety-critical systems.

Impact Analysis: The tools provide impact analysis features to understand how changes in one part of the system affect others, helping to manage the complexity of interconnected vehicle systems.

5. Safety and Security

Embedded Software Testing: IBM Engineering tools provide robust test management frameworks to validate the safety and security of embedded software, ensuring that SDVs operate reliably under all conditions.

IBM Engineering solutions provide a comprehensive framework for managing the complexity, safety, and innovation required in developing software-defined vehicles. By facilitating robust systems engineering, agile development, model-based design, IBM enables automotive manufacturers to accelerate the development of SDVs while maintaining the highest standards of quality and safety.

Why use an integrated foundation?

An integrated solution like IBM Engineering is particularly beneficial for the development of Software-Defined Vehicles (SDVs) due to the following key reasons:

Unified Platform: IBM Engineering provides a unified platform that integrates all aspects of systems and software engineering, from requirements management to design, testing, and deployment. This end-to-end traceability ensures that all requirements, including safety and regulatory compliance, are met throughout the vehicle’s lifecycle.

Compliance with Standards: Integrated tools help ensure adherence to industry standards like ISO 26262 for functional safety and AUTOSAR for software architecture, reducing the risk of non-compliance.

Cross-Functional Team Collaboration: SDV development requires tight collaboration between various disciplines, including software developers, systems engineers, hardware designers, and testers. IBM Engineering’s integrated solution facilitates seamless communication and coordination across these teams, ensuring that all stakeholders are aligned.

Single Source of Truth: With all data and documentation centralized in a single platform, teams have access to the most up-to-date information, reducing misunderstandings and errors.

Faster Iteration Cycles: Integrated tools streamline development processes, allowing for faster iteration and quicker delivery of new features and updates, which is essential in the competitive automotive market.

Digital Twins: The ability to create digital twins of vehicle systems allows for real-time monitoring and predictive maintenance, which is vital for maintaining the performance and reliability of SDVs.

Impact Analysis: Integrated tools provide the ability to analyze the impact of changes across the entire vehicle system, helping to manage the complexity of SDVs and ensuring that updates do not introduce new issues.

IBM Engineering’s solution leverages OSLC (Open Services for Lifecycle Collaboration) enables integration across various non IBM engineering tools, ensuring end-to-end traceability, and facilitating real-time collaboration among distributed teams. OSLC’s capabilities support the development of reliable, innovative vehicles by linking data and artifacts across your tool lifecycle, ultimately improving quality, compliance, and the ability to meet the dynamic demands of the automotive industry.

A not very secret weapon

IBM Global Configuration Management (GCM) can play an important role in supporting Software-Defined Vehicle (SDV) development by managing the complex configurations across multiple software and hardware components throughout the vehicle’s lifecycle. IBM Global Configuration Management (GCM) specifically supports Software-Defined Vehicle (SDV) development through the following key capabilities:

Global Configurations: GCM manages global configurations that represent a set of interrelated configurations across multiple domains, such as software, hardware, and documentation. These configurations encapsulate a snapshot of the entire system at a given point in time, including the versions and states of all relevant components.

Hierarchical Structure: GCM supports a hierarchical configuration structure, where global configurations are made up of nested sub-configurations. Each sub-configuration can correspond to different domains or aspects of the product, like the software stack, hardware components, or specific vehicle features.

Version Control and Baselines: GCM tracks versions of entire configurations rather than single items, allowing teams to create baselines that capture the state of all included components at a specific moment. This is crucial for managing complex products where multiple versions need to be maintained and where different product variants might share common components.

Traceability Across Configurations: GCM provides comprehensive traceability across various configurations, helping developers track changes, dependencies, and impacts across the SDV’s lifecycle, ensuring that updates and modifications are properly managed and aligned with the overall vehicle design.

Cross-Domain Configuration Coordination: With SDVs encompassing a wide range of domains (e.g., infotainment, ADAS, powertrain), GCM ensures that configurations across these domains are synchronized and managed in a cohesive manner, reducing the risk of misalignment or conflicts between components.

By providing robust configuration management capabilities, IBM GCM ensures that the complex and evolving software and hardware components in SDVs are effectively managed.

Takeaway:

An integrated foundation like IBM Engineering can be valuable for the development of Software-Defined Vehicles because it provides a cohesive, environment that supports the development process. By ensuring traceability, fostering collaboration, enabling agile practices, and offering robust systems engineering capabilities, IBM Engineering helps automotive manufacturers efficiently manage the complexity of delivering SDVs.

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