White PaperAutomotive
Developing the Software Defined Vehicle – How to Be "SDV Ready"
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The transition from traditional electrical/electronic (E/E) vehicle architectures to software-defined vehicles (SDVs) has increased the demand for development tools considerably. The choice of suitable solutions is limited by new heterogeneous multi-core high-performance chips and highly complex software stacks in a virtualized environment. Download Lauterbach's white paper to learn how "SDV Ready" solutions support automotive developers in speeding up and simplifying the development of today's and future SDVs.
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Overview
This whitepaper by Lauterbach GmbH outlines the transition from traditional domain-based vehicle architectures to the Software Defined Vehicle (SDV) paradigm, emphasizing the increased complexity and demands this evolution places on development, debug, and trace tools.
The SDV concept centers on vehicles whose functions and features are predominantly software-driven, enabled by increasingly powerful, heterogeneous multicore SoCs replacing numerous simpler ECUs. This shift is driven by trends in electrification, automation, and connectivity, requiring extensive software stacks operating in virtualized environments with container technologies. SDVs enable over-the-air updates, new feature deployment from app stores, and provide manufacturers with data for lifecycle management and service improvements.
SDVs move from domain-based architectures—where many domain-specific ECUs collaborate—to zonal architectures. In zonal architectures, fewer but higher-performance control units are spatially organized in vehicle zones, linked via high-speed Ethernet backbones and capable of handling diverse workloads, including safety-critical real-time control. Central high-performance SoCs like Qualcomm Snapdragon, Nvidia Drive Orin, or NXP’s processors integrate multiple heterogeneous cores (Arm Cortex-A/R, DSP accelerators) to support this.
The paper stresses the need for powerful, flexible debug and trace tools tailored to these demands. Lauterbach’s TRACE32® is highlighted as "SDV Ready," supporting multicore heterogeneous debug, real-time trace capture, and hypervisor-aware debugging with simultaneous OS-aware inspection across virtual machines. It supports an extensive range of OSes, including AUTOSAR Classic and Adaptive platforms, POSIX operating systems (Linux, QNX), and containerized applications.
Key features include broad emulation and virtual target support to enable early development ("Shift Left") before silicon availability, seamless debugging across virtual and physical targets, and cloud debugging integration exemplified by Corellium’s virtualized Arm Automotive Reference Platform running on Amazon AWS Graviton processors.
Overall, the document underscores that robust, feature-rich debug and trace tooling capable of handling complex heterogeneous multicore SoCs, hypervised and container environments, and virtual platforms is essential to successfully develop and maintain SDVs throughout their lifecycle. TRACE32® positions itself as a comprehensive solution addressing these challenges across the entire software stack, from virtual ECUs to real silicon, facilitating efficient SDV development.