In connected car news are UL, AiDEN, Valens, Hapbee, Renesas,Mercedes-Benz, Google, Hyundai, Samsung, Ambarella and Hyundai. In this Article UL Cybersecurity AssuranceAiDEN Services Hub Real-Time CommunicationValens ValidatedHapbee for LocoMobi WorldRenesas SoC for In-Vehicle GatewaysMercedes-Benz & GoogleEB Corbos LinuxSamsung & AmbarellaHyundai Accelerator Program Open
UL Solutions, a global leader in applied safety science, today announced it issued the first Cybersecurity Assurance Program Certificate for ISO/SAE 21434:2021, Road Vehicles — Cybersecurity Engineering to LG Innotek. The UL Solutions Cybersecurity Assurance Program (CAP) Certificate recognizes that LG Innotek’s cybersecurity management system meets the requirements of the ISO/SAE 21434:2021 standard, which was introduced last year.
AiDEN Automotive, a connected services platform that provides bi-directional communication between vehicles, services and infrastructure, announced the availability of AiDEN Services Hub, the industry’s first solution to enable real-time communication and tailored services across vehicle brands, infrastructure and service providers to create a better in-vehicle experience. The AiDEN Services Hub already boasts a strong and growing ecosystem of more than 20 partners across insurance, parking, maintenance, fleet management and entertainment.
While the idea of connected vehicles has been around for decades, the automotive industry continues to face major challenges in creating a bi-directional connected services network. There is a need for a complete and efficient solution that addresses the delivery and management of digital services, as well as communication, revenue, and privacy compliance across all parties – OEMS, service providers and drivers. Proprietary cloud integrations, mobile apps and external on-board diagnostic (OBD) hardware provide only partial solutions, use anonymous data and lack scalability and compliance with current privacy regulations.
The AiDEN Hub is the first bi-directional service hub for the automotive industry. The software-only solution streams real-time services across vehicle brands, providing a simple and intuitive experience for OEMs, service providers and drivers. With 100% GDPR and CCPA compliance, AiDEN’s consent management feature ensures improved and personalized features and experiences, all while maintaining the highest level of privacy protection.
Valens Semiconductor (NYSE: VLN), a premier provider of high-speed connectivity solutions for the automotive and audio-video markets, announced that Hosiden Corporation (6804:JP), a comprehensive electronic component manufacturer, and a global player in the automotive equipment component industry, has completed the validation of Hosiden’s connectors and cables with Valens Semiconductor’s VA7000 chipset, the first in the industry MIPI A-PHY-compliant chipset family. This new milestone further demonstrates the strong momentum the MIPI A-PHY standard and the VA7000 are gaining in the automotive market in Japan .
Hosiden, uniquely positioned as an automotive Tier 1 and Tier 2 company, manufactures and sells high-speed connectors for use in high-speed digital signal transmission, and for Electric Vehicles (EV). The company also serves the medical and industrial markets.
Hapbee Technologies, Inc. (TSXV: HAPB) (OTCQB: HAPBF) (FSE: HA1) (“Hapbee” or the “Company”) is pleased to announce it has signed a non-binding Memorandum of Understanding (the “MOU”) with LocoMobi World Inc. – a Smart City technology company specializing in innovative parking, tolling and mobility solutions for the future.
The MOU is the first step in jointly developing an innovative driver safety and performance application (the “Application”). As stipulated in the MOU, part of Hapbee’s contribution to developing the Application is enabling drivers to utilize the Company’s bio-streams, such as Focus, Alert, and Boost, to enhance awareness and safety without having to ingest stimulants.
The Company believes some of its performance-related Signals have safety benefits for drivers. For example, one feature contemplated for development in the MOU is driver-selected or automated Hapbee Signal delivery via in-vehicle seats. Conceptually, the automatic Signal delivery would be triggered by biometric data collected from sensors in the steering wheel or driving patterns recognized by vehicle sensor data. If the Application is successfully developed, Hapbee and LocoMobi World aim to provide the automotive industry with a safe and innovative platform that helps drivers maintain focus to make our roads and highways safer.
Renesas Electronics Corporation (TSE: 6723), a premier supplier of advanced semiconductor solutions, announced that it has developed four technologies for system-on-chip (SoC) devices for in-vehicle communication gateways. These SoCs are expected to play a crucial role in defining the next-generation electrical/electronic (E/E) architecture in automotive systems.
SoCs for automotive gateways must provide both high performance to implement new applications such as cloud services, and low power consumption when they are not in use. They also need to deliver fast CAN response to support instant start-up. Additionally, these SoCs need to provide power-efficient communication technology that enables network functions as a gateway using limited power and security technology to enable safe communication outside the vehicle. To meet these requirements, Renesas has developed (1) an architecture that dynamically changes the circuit operation timing to match the vehicle conditions with optimized performance and power consumption, (2) fast start-up technology by partitioning and powering essential programs only, (3) a network accelerator that achieves a power efficiency of 10 gigabits per second/watt (Gbps/W), and (4) security technology that prevents communication interference by recognizing and protecting vital in-vehicle communication related to vehicle control.
Renesas announced these achievements at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference 2023 (ISSCC 2023), February 19 – 23 in San Francisco, California.
Details of the new technologies include:
1. Architecture that optimizes processing performance and power consumption depending on vehicle conditions
Communication gateway SoCs need to deliver processing performance exceeding 30,000 Dhrystone million instructions per second (DMIPS) when running, while also keeping standby power consumption to 2 mW or less in order to maintain battery life. Typically, high-performance SoCs also have high power consumption in standby mode, while low-power SoCs with small standby power consumption have performance issues. To resolve this tradeoff, Renesas combined in a single chip a high-performance application system and a control system optimized for ultralow standby power consumption. The new architecture controls the power supplies of these two subsystems and changes the timing of circuit operation to achieve an optimal balance between performance and power efficiency. This results in higher performance during operation and lower power consumption during standby.
2. Fast start-up technology with external flash memory achieving the same fast speed as embedded flash memory
Since communication gateway SoCs manage processing of critical functions related to vehicle control, they must be able to respond to CAN within 50 milliseconds (msec.) of start-up. However, if the SoC uses a process that does not support embedded flash memory, the start-up program must be encrypted and stored in external flash memory. This means that it takes additional time to load program data and decrypt it. To solve this issue, Renesas developed technology that splits the program into sections and initially loads and decrypts only an essential portion for start-up, while continuing to load the rest of the program in parallel. This enables a fast response to CAN (50ms or less), even when using external flash memory.
3. Highly efficient network accelerator with 10 Gbps/W communication efficiency
To allow air cooling and heat dissipation for electronic control units (ECUs), communication gateway SoCs must keep power consumption to 7 watts or less. Since computing processing performance of 30,000 DMIPS or higher requires approximately 6 watts of power, only around 1 watt can be used for network processing. This presents a challenge as the total communication of 10 Gbps must be achieved using 1 watt of power, with a processing efficiency of only around 3Gbps/W when processed by the CPU. To work around this issue, Renesas offloaded processing from the CPU to a custom network accelerator, achieving higher efficiency at 9.4 Gbps/W. Additionally, Renesas boosted efficiency to 11.5 Gbps/W by switching the routing method from a conventional TCAM approach to a hash table in SRAM.
4. Security technology to prevent interference with communication requiring high reliability
A communication gateway SoC performs a mixed set of tasks such as data processing related to vehicle control that requires a high level of reliability, and large amounts of random data communication with cloud services and others. Since vehicle control is essential to ensuring safety, protecting and separating mission-critical data is important. However, despite the differences in data types, all data is transmitted through the same in-vehicle network, leading to physical intersections and raising security issues. To address this challenge, Renesas developed security technology that analyzes incoming packets to the SoC. It determines whether or not they contain essential data, and assigns them to different pathways and control functions within the network accelerator. This prevents interference with data that requires high reliability and safeguards in-vehicle data communication from a variety of security threats.
These four technologies have been incorporated into Renesas’ R-Car S4 vehicle communication gateway SoC. With the latest R-Car S4, developers can accelerate advances in E/E architectures, implement secure connection with cloud services, and ensure safe and reliable vehicle control at the same time.
Mercedes-Benz and Google announced a long-term strategic partnership to further accelerate auto innovation and create the industry’s next-generation digital luxury car experience. With this partnership, Mercedes-Benz will be the first automaker to build its own branded navigation experience based on new in-car data and navigation capabilities from Google Maps Platform.
This will give the luxury automaker access to Google’s leading geospatial offering, including detailed information about places, real-time and predictive traffic information, automatic rerouting, and more. By embedding these features into the upcoming Mercedes-Benz Operating System (MB.OS), customers will be able to enjoy a superior navigation experience, thanks to easy usability and outstanding graphics on the car’s high-resolution screen. To help enrich the user experience, the companies will bring the YouTube app into the Mercedes-Benz infotainment system. In addition, Mercedes-Benz will use Google Maps data to enable assisted driving features such as automatic speed adjustments before intersections, roundabouts or curves.
As a first step, Mercedes-Benz will give customers access to Place Details provided by Google, helping them find detailed information about more than 200 million businesses and places around the world, including business hours, photos, ratings, and reviews. Place Details will be available starting today in all vehicles with the latest generation of MBUX in applicable markets*.
The companies agreed to explore further collaboration using Google Cloud’s leading artificial intelligence (AI), data and open infrastructure solutions. For example:
Elektrobit and Canonical today announced EB corbos Linux – built on Ubuntu, an industry first bringing the largest open-source Linux community to automotive software. Available immediately from Elektrobit, the new solution provides OEMs and Tier 1 suppliers with the benefits and flexibility of an open-source operating system for developing electronic control units (ECUs) in software-defined vehicles. It integrates Ubuntu, provided by Canonical, in a solution that addresses the specific needs of the automotive sector.
Elektrobit has provided embedded and connected software products and services to the automotive industry for more than 35 years. EB corbos Linux – built on Ubuntu will enable the application of open-source Linux to ECU application development, while ensuring compliance to processes needed for automotive mass production across development and in-vehicle systems with embedded devices.
With the increasing complexity of software-defined vehicles, carmakers need software that optimizes resources to speed up development. EB corbos Linux – built on Ubuntu offers a rich and flexible open-source development environment. It enables carmakers to leverage advancements that have already been made by the massive community of world-class open-source developers while developing innovations of their own. EB corbos Linux – built on Ubuntu fills a major gap in the functional architectures of software-defined vehicles, giving them more flexibility as well as access to a large pool of experienced, motivated application developers.
EB corbos Linux – built on Ubuntu is a completely customizable software package that comes with a software-development kit (SDK), tooling and source code. Highly modular common binary packages are combined and configured in an application-specific solution.
“Linux is a well-established, open-source solution in industries ranging from large-scale cloud and enterprise systems to embedded systems for mobile communications. The automotive industry is at a point in its development where embracing open source has huge potential benefits,” said Bertrand Boisseau, automotive sector lead at Canonical. “We’re excited to work with Elektrobit to bridge the gap between automotive software and open source.”
Open-source development is a key asset in many industries as there is no vendor lock-in, which is a major advantage in reducing investment risk when building new platform ecosystems. The open-source nature of EB corbos Linux – built-on Ubuntu makes it simple to study and inspect, speeding up development. Elektrobit provides long-term security and hardware maintenance, giving customers an automotive ECU solution from a single source, leveraging all the advantages of open-source software. Customers gain added value with security updates and issue resolution during the complete life cycle of their automotive projects.
“The automotive industry has historically relied heavily on distributed, specialized, single-function and highly-embedded ECUs to implement the electrical and electronic features of a vehicle. With today’s more complex architectures, greater flexibility is needed to facilitate innovation and enable frequent updates,” said Jens Petersohn, director, Linux product management, Elektrobit. “Carmakers have been asking for an operating system that will provide the same type of capabilities and flexibilities that we’re seeing in cloud-based or enterprise software development. With EB corbos Linux – built on Ubuntu, it is now here.”
Samsung Electronics, a world leader in advanced semiconductor technology, and Ambarella, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMBA), an edge AI semiconductor company, today announced that Samsung’s Foundry business is providing its 5-nanometer (nm) process technology to Ambarella for its newly announced CV3-AD685 automotive AI central domain controller. This collaboration will help transform the next generation of autonomous driving vehicle safety systems by bringing new levels of AI processing performance, power and reliability.
The CV3-AD685 is the first production version of Ambarella’s CV3-AD family of automotive AI central domain controllers, with Tier-1 automotive suppliers announcing they will offer solutions using the CV3-AD system-on-chip (SoC) product family. Samsung’s 5nm process technology is optimized for automotive-grade semiconductors, with extremely tight process controls and advanced IP for exceptional reliability and outstanding traceability.
Ambarella will rely on Samsung’s 5nm process maturity and the technology’s solid track record. This 5nm process is backed by the company’s extensive experience in automotive foundry process, IP, and service package development to enable manufacturers to create cutting-edge innovations in assisted and automated mobility.
“Ambarella and Samsung Foundry have a rich history of collaboration, and we are excited to bring their world-class 5nm technology to our new CV3-AD685 SoCs,” said Fermi Wang, President and CEO at Ambarella. “Samsung’s proven automotive process technology allows us to bring new levels of AI acceleration, systems integration and power efficiency to ADAS and L2+ through L4 autonomous vehicles.”
The CV3-AD685 integrates Ambarella’s next-generation CVflow® AI engine, which includes neural network processing that is 20 times faster than the previous generation of Ambarella’s CV2 SoCs. It also provides general-vector and neural-vector processing capabilities to deliver the overall performance required for full autonomous driving (AD) stack processing, including computer vision, 4D imaging radar, deep sensor fusion and path planning.
“Samsung brings 5nm EUV FinFET technology to automotive applications for unprecedented ADAS and vision processor performance,” said Sang-Pil Sim, executive vice president and head of Foundry Corporate Planning at Samsung Electronics. “With Tier-1 automotive suppliers already adopting the technology, we believe other automotive companies will also consider using the Ambarella CV3-AD SoC product family manufactured in Samsung’s 5nm process.”
The CV3-AD685 will be the first in the CV3-AD product family to use Samsung’s 5nm process, and this SoC integrates advanced image processing, a dense stereo and optical flow engine, ARM® Cortex® A78AE and R52 CPUs, an automotive GPU for visualizations, and a hardware security module (HSM). It features an “algorithm first” architecture that provides support for the entire autonomous-driving software stack.
The high-performance, power efficient and scalable CV3-AD family, which is built specifically for ADAS, complements a wide range of solutions for assisted driving, while advancing vehicle automation. The integrated CV3-AD685 SoC enables information from various sensors to be fused for robust L2+ to L4 autonomous driving. Samsung Foundry’s industry-leading process technology and advanced 3D-packaging solutions are powering many of the latest mobile, HPC and automotive solutions.
Samsung’s 5nm process is also backed by the Samsung Advanced Foundry Ecosystem (SAFE™) program. The SAFE™ program ensures close collaboration between Samsung Foundry, ecosystem partners, and customers to deliver robust SoC designs based on certified key design components including Process Design Kits (PDK), reference flows with Design Methodologies (DM), a variety of Intellectual Properties (IP), and on-demand design support.
Hyundai Motor Group (the Group) announced its 2023 first-half ZER01NE Accelerator program, an open innovation platform to facilitate collaboration between startups and various teams under the Group on various projects. This program aims to discover valuable startups and explore the possibilities of strategic use case of their innovative technologies.
Startups can apply to one of 18 global projects devised by the Group’s internal teams under six key themes: autotech, mobility service, smart factory, robotics, metaverse and proptech. Startups may apply to one specific project.
The Group’s participating teams that are responsible for project execution are directly involved in reviewing and recruiting the startup applicants for each project. Only incorporated startups will be eligible for consideration and can submit their application on the official application website from Feb. 17 to March 12. Results will be announced in April.
Selected startups will be provided with a project development budget and could be evaluated for equity investments.
Since the Group introduced the ZER01NE Accelerator in 2018, 150 teams from 11 affiliates of the Group and 140 startups have worked together on 107 collaborative projects. This has led to 74 startups successfully receiving equity investments from the Group.