Archive for the ‘Automotive’ Category

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Software-Defined Networking for the Software-Defined Vehicle

By Amir Bar-Niv, VP of Marketing, Automotive Business Unit, Marvell

and John Heinlein, Chief Marketing Officer, Sonatus

and Simon Edelhaus, VP SW, Automotive Business Unit, Marvell

The software-defined vehicle (SDV) is one of the newest and most interesting megatrends in the automotive industry. As we discussed in a previous blog, the reason that this new architectural—and business—model will be successful is the advantages it offers to all stakeholders:

  • The OEMs (car manufacturers) will gain new revenue streams from aftermarket services and new applications;
  • The car owners will easily upgrade their vehicle features and functions; and
  • The mobile operators will profit from increased vehicle data consumption driven by new applications.

What is a software-defined vehicle? While there is no official definition, the term reflects the change in the way software is being used in vehicle design to enable flexibility and extensibility. To better understand the software-defined vehicle, it helps to first examine the current approach.

Today’s embedded control units (ECUs) that manage car functions do include software, however, the software in each ECU is often incompatible with and isolated from other modules. When updates are required, the vehicle owner must visit the dealer service center, which inconveniences the owner and is costly for the manufacturer.

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Marvell Joins SOAFEE and Autoware Foundation to Advance Software-Defined Vehicle Architectures

By Willard Tu, Associate Vice President, Automotive, Marvell

I’m excited to share that Marvell is now a member of two leading automotive technology organizations: the Scalable Open Architecture for Embedded Edge (SOAFEE) and the Autoware Foundation. Marvell’s participation in these organizations’ initiatives demonstrates its continued focus and investment in the automotive market. The new memberships follow the company’s 2021 announcement of its Brightlane™ automotive portfolio, and reflect Marvell’s expanding automotive silicon initiative.

SOAFEE, founded by Arm, is an industry-led collaboration defined by automakers, semiconductor suppliers, open source and independent software vendors, and cloud technology leaders. The collaboration intends to deliver a cloud-native architecture enhanced for mixed-criticality automotive applications with corresponding open-source reference implementations to enable commercial and non-commercial offerings.

As a member of SOAFEE, Marvell will access the SOAFEE architecture standards to help streamline development from cloud to deployment at the vehicle. This will enable faster time to market for the Marvell Brightlane automotive portfolio.

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The Right Stuff: A Past and Future History of Automotive Connectivity

By Amir Bar-Niv, VP of Marketing, Automotive Business Unit, Marvell

and Mark Davis, Senior Director, Solutions Marketing, Marvell

In the blog, Back to the Future – Automotive network run at speed of 10Gbps, we discussed the benefits and advantages of zonal architecture and why OEMs are adopting it for their next-generation vehicles. One of the biggest advantages of zonal architecture is its ability to reduce the complexity, cost and weight of the cable harness. In another blog, Ethernet Camera Bridge for Software-Defined Vehicles, we discussed the software-defined vehicle, and how using Ethernet from end-to-end helps to make that vehicle a reality.

While in the near future most devices in the car will be connected through zonal switches, cameras are the exception. They will continue to connect to processors over point-to-point protocol (P2PP) links using proprietary networking protocols such as low-voltage differential signaling (LVDS), Maxim’s GMSL or TI’s FPD-Link.

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The Race Against Automotive Hackers Is Accelerating

By Hari Parmar, Senior Principal Automotive System Architect, Marvell

“In your garage or driveway sits a machine with more lines of code than a modern passenger jet. Today’s cars and trucks, with an internet link, can report the weather, pay for gas, find a parking spot, route around traffic jams and tune in to radio stations from around the world. Soon they’ll speak to one another, alert you to sales as you pass your favorite stores, and one day they’ll even drive themselves.

While consumers may love the features, hackers may love them even more.”

The New York Times, March 18, 2021

Hacking used to be an arcane worry, the concern of a few technical specialists. But with recent cyberattacks on pipelines, hospitals and retail systems, digital attacks have suddenly been thrust into public consciousness, leading many to wonder: are cars at risk, too?

Not if Marvell can help it. As a leading supplier of automotive silicon, the company has been intensely focused on identifying and securing potential vulnerabilities before they can remotely compromise a vehicle, its driver or passengers.

Unfortunately, hacking cars isn’t just theoretical – in 2015, researchers on a laptop commandeered a Jeep Cherokee 10 miles away, shutting off power, blasting the radio, turning on the AC and making the windshield wipers go berserk. And today, seven years later, millions more cars – including most new vehicles – are connected to the cloud.

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Designing energy efficient chips

By Rebecca O'Neill, Global Head of ESG, Marvell

Today is Energy Efficiency Day. Energy, specifically the electricity consumption required to power our chips, is something that is top of mind here at Marvell. Our goal is to reduce power consumption of products with each generation for set capabilities.

Our products play an essential role in powering data infrastructure spanning cloud and enterprise data centers, 5G carrier infrastructure, automotive vehicles, and industrial and enterprise networking. When we design our products, we focus on innovative features that deliver new capabilities while also improving performance, capacity and security to ultimately improve energy efficiency during product use.

These innovations help make the world’s data infrastructure more efficient and, by extension, reduce our collective impact on climate change. The use of our products by our customers contributes to Marvell’s Scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions, which is our biggest category of emissions.

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