SAN JOSE, Calif., Feb. 18, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- The automotive industry is undergoing a profound transformation driven by technological advancements. As the era of Software-Defined Vehicles (SDVs) emerges, digital features and applications are expanding rapidly, increasing demands for advanced hardware and computational power. With software codebases reaching billions of lines, the industry is rethinking vehicle software and electronic/electrical (E/E) architecture designs.
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To address these challenges, S2C has collaborated with Arm, Xylon, and ZC Technology to develop an innovative hybrid prototyping solution tailored for future automotive central and zonal E/E architectures. This innovative design integrates S2C's Prodigy Prototyping system, creating a versatile hybrid platform for automotive microcontroller units (MCUs). The platform is designed to reduce development time and mitigate risks with next-generation Arm ® Cortex ® -R52+-based automotive MCU designs, enabling faster and safer innovation.
Revolutionizing Automotive Design: The Rise of Software-Defined Vehicles
The shift toward electrification and intelligent vehicles propels the automotive industry toward digitalization and SDVs. Intelligent Connected Vehicles have become a key focus of industry upgrades, driving the evolution of E/E architectures from traditional distributed designs to domain-centric and, eventually, centralized structures.
Central to this transformation is the consolidation of Electronic Control Units (ECUs), which now execute multiple system functions through high-performance ECUs. This approach reduces development and production costs while enhancing flexibility and enabling the transition from fixed functions to software-defined features. Major OEMs are embracing this paradigm and optimizing E/E architectures with various topologies.
Among the components of automotive electronic systems, MCUs are one of the most critical parts of ECUs. MCUs are responsible for managing and controlling the vehicle's body electronics and safety systems while handling massive amounts of data, making driving decisions, and coordinating the operations of various systems. To meet the demands of complex driving environments and dynamic driving needs, MCUs must feature high-performance processors, ample memory, and diverse interfaces. At the same time, high reliability and stability are essential characteristics of MCUs designed for automotive applications. Automotive-grade MCU architectures must comply with stringent safety standards such as ISO 26262, as even the smallest malfunction could have severe consequences for driving safety.
As driving environments grow more complex and safety requirements intensify, enhancing MCU performance has become essential for ECU consolidation strategies. This integration simplifies layouts, reduces hardware complexity, accelerates software updates, and lays a strong foundation for SDVs.
A Hybrid Prototyping Solution Tailored for Automotive MCUs
Based on this, S2C, in collaboration with Arm, Xylon, and ZC Technology, has developed a hybrid prototyping solution for automotive MCUs based on the Arm architecture. This innovative reference design is tailored for future automotive central and zonal E/E architectures, enabling customers to explore and evaluate new automotive architectures in depth and achieve product differentiation. The hybrid prototyping solution integrates S2C's Prodigy Prototyping system with automotive MCUs to support rapid prototyping for future high-performance ECUs and regional zonal controllers, and achieve real-time performance, with flexible features, and reconfigurable hardware that allows seamless integration with various Arm-based CPUs. Additionally, its peripherals leverage existing automotive MCUs to serve as external communication and networking interfaces. It empowers developers to analyze workloads and develop applications during the transition to E/E architectures. S2C's robust prototyping system, also demonstrates the migration steps, advantages, and supporting resources required to make a simple and seamless transition to the Arm architecture.