Summary

In the following we will elaborate on rapid prototyping in the area of future automotive architectures. We present a practical example based on work done in the CeCaS Project. The CeCaS Project is funded by German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) initiative MANNHEIM and focuses on central car server architectures and super computing platforms for autonomous vehicles. 

First, we discuss aspects of modern software-defined vehicles (SDV) architectures and why, to some degree, these vehicles are a “Datacenter on Wheels” and why a modern datacenter architecture is not immediately applicable and useful for implementing SDVs.

We then dive into the key aspects of the CeCaS Project, with a focus on the work packages AP2 (Automotive Supercomputing Platform – Central Car Server), AP5 (Software-Architecture) and AP9 (Demonstration – Vehicles, Laboratory, HIL). We look at the in-vehicle Zone-based architecture for connectivity between a so-called Zone ECU and a centralized computer (see Figure 1). We show how deterministic networking at multi-Gigabit line rates can be achieved by combining modern open standards such as IEEE Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN), the Internet Protocol, reliable transport layer protocols such as the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) or the Reliable Rapid Request-Response Protocol (RRRRP) together with protocol Full Accelerators. We also show how a modern, data-centric automotive communication middleware can effectively decouple vehicle functions (ADAS) from access to sensor data and connectivity technology.Last, we demonstrate a cost-optimized rapid prototyping approach for exploring, and validating, the many assumptions and trade-offs related to future zonal vehicle architectures (SDV). Heterogeneous Multi-Processor System-on-Chip devices integrating FPGA logic with multi-core CPUs running a Linux-based automotive communication middleware stack are a vital ingredient for implementing such Automotive Rapid Prototyping Systems (Auto/RPS).