Entering 2023, the smart car software track will become more lively.
Compared with the traditional automobile development model, the software is part of the distributed ECU engineering development and is provided by the first-tier supplier as a black box. The software development cost is considered as part of the hardware system cost, and no separate pricing is realized.
Today, "software-defined cars" drive cars to open a new software development model and promote software to become a new role in the automotive industry.
Statistics show that in 2019, the size of the global automotive software market was US$19.3 billion; it is estimated that by the end of 2030, the size of the global automotive software market is expected to reach US$92.4 billion, with an annual growth rate of 15.3 % between 2020 and 2030.
Under the new pattern and new changes brought about by the 100 billion automotive software market , the pioneers have already seen the software future of smart cars.
Taking United Electronics as an example, this company has achieved sales of 30.9 billion yuan from 44 million yuan in 1996 to 30.9 billion yuan in 2022. It is inseparable from its in-depth excavation of the car track and timely grasping the wind vane of the subdivided track.
At the 2023 Developer Conference held by United Electronics, the company released the USP 2.0 developer platform (UAES Software Platform) . This is an automotive software development platform with a service-oriented architecture , which provides developers with convenient and efficient software tools and service components, helps the ecological construction of smart car software, and accelerates the development and implementation of application software in vehicle scenarios.
" United Electronics will make every effort to create a 'building block' platform solution under the new framework, with a flexible cooperation model, an open and co-construction attitude, and high-quality services, to help partners create a win-win situation in an all-round way." Xiong Weiming, general manager of United Electronics , said .
New products based on "central computing + regionalization + SOA" come out
Facing the tremendous changes and transformation waves in today's automotive market, under the guidance of the "two modernizations and two new" strategies, United Electronics has achieved remarkable results in the implementation of its new electronic and electrical architecture and SOA service-oriented software solutions, and under the development trend of intelligent network connection With the latest thinking and layout.
" The new infrastructure of smart cars is a new EEA solution based on cross-domain integration of central computing + regionalization + SOA. United Electronics meets technical requirements through bus bandwidth, electronic controller computing power, integration, and service. Improve end-user experience, fast iterative development, upgrade and push software, and quickly respond to new market demands. " Xiong Weiming said.
In terms of optimization of the vehicle-level power distribution system, United Electronics has helped to reduce the length of the vehicle wiring harness by 25% , realize the optimization of the wire harness diameter by 28%, and reduce the number of vehicle distribution circuits by 10% .
" Basic hardware determines the height of the architecture, the communication backbone network determines the width of the architecture, and the software ecology determines the breadth of the architecture. " Xiong Weiming believes that the automotive industry has shifted from traditional electromechanical technology to information technology integration; Collaborative agile development shift.
Statistics show that by 2025, more than 65% of cars will be composed of electronic components, of which software will account for a large part. Software not only grows in volume, but also in complexity and needs to meet functional safety requirements for safety-related components.
In the future, the proportion of software development costs will gradually increase from about 5% of traditional ECUs to 10%, 15-20% and other higher levels.
According to the current OEM software architecture of most parts, thanks to the separation of software and hardware, the modular approach runs through the entire design of the entire intelligent driving platform architecture, which means that subsequent single ADAS, intelligent cockpit and other functions can be quickly integrated into the software platform.
Previously, the Tesla Model 3 initiated a comprehensive transformation of the electrical and electronic architecture, pushing car companies into a period of rapid iteration of the architecture. From distributed to domain control to centralized, with the development of chips and communication technologies, the automotive electronic and electrical architecture is undergoing tremendous changes.
The service-oriented software architecture SOA , through standardized service interfaces, loosely coupled service mechanisms, and composable and scalable service features, combined with the future centralized electronic and electrical architecture centered on the high-performance computing platform, will become the "software" in the future automotive field . The technological basis for driving innovation.
Based on this, United Electronics has launched a vehicle-cloud integrated system solution based on a centralized electronic and electrical architecture , including a centralized regional architecture hardware solution (central computing platform + regional controller) and a service-oriented automotive software development platform USP . And through a flexible development cooperation model, support customers to quickly apply innovation and integration to meet personalized user experience.
At present, the company has acquired and is simultaneously developing a central computing + regional controller platform under the new architecture for 8 customers , and will realize the mass production of the first regional controller product in the Chinese market in June this year , through regionalization The architecture can realize the integration of nearly 20 independent ECUs, and the communication rate can be increased from 2M to 1000M.
USP2.0 developer platform to accelerate the landing of scenarios
Today, the intelligent networking upgrade of the automobile industry is changing the traditional attribute of the automobile as a travel tool, making it gradually become a "mobile intelligent terminal" , and automobile software has a tendency to copy the division of labor of smartphone software.
How to broaden the breadth of the new electronic and electrical architecture and how to create an industry developer ecosystem are new propositions that the entire smart car industry needs to face together.
In this context, United Electronics launched the USP 2.0 developer platform (https://uspdeveloper.uaes.com/). As a one-stop digital solution for in-vehicle application design, development and testing, the platform provides a developer-oriented tool chain and vehicle standard services.
Among them, the developer-oriented tool chain is divided into product prototyping tools for ordinary developers and vehicle application development tools for automotive software development engineers . Design the scene by dragging and dropping, use the virtual environment to quickly and intuitively understand the function, and realize the cloud WYSIWYG function display environment.
One of its highlights is the product prototyping tool . USP provides a cloud-based graphical function design environment and drag-and-drop vehicle atomic service components. Developers only need to drag and drop atomic services from the list to the editing area and complete the connection. You can easily and quickly turn ideas into reality; in addition, USP also provides a WYSIWYG cloud display environment, allowing you to observe real-time application effects in a virtual environment.
In terms of in-vehicle application development tools , USP provides solutions covering the entire process of development, testing and verification, creating a pre-installed local development environment for developers, and providing a development kit (SDK), including application engineering frameworks, examples The code and standard service library support developers to use professional modeling tools in the automotive industry to call vehicle atomic services and basic services.
The rich component and service library is also a highlight. USP has packaged United Electronics' many years of system development experience and capabilities into services, and has released more than 1,100 vehicle APIs, 65 OTA APIs and 55 AI operators , covering body control, energy management, motion control, thermal management , etc. Functional domains help developers quickly build automotive application software "buildings" with thousands of faces.
Obviously, in terms of benefits, the USP2.0 platform can significantly improve the output efficiency of in-vehicle applications, greatly reduce the development costs of in-vehicle applications, and greatly lower the threshold for in-vehicle application development .
At present, the USP2.0 platform has been opened to United Electronics internal employees and invited users through product prototyping tools ; it is expected that by June 2023 , it will be opened to universities, enterprises and institutions through the USP Developer School ; by 2023 In August , it was fully opened through the USP developer forum .
In the future, USP will also release more comprehensive atomic and basic services for more developer portraits, support the deployment of customers' innovative applications, and empower the software-defined automotive industry ecology. For example, for C++ developers , release more atomic and basic services such as weather service, temperature and humidity service, rainfall information, vehicle information, etc., and continuously optimize the cross-domain virtual simulation verification environment by expanding the vehicle scene library and vehicle model , providing engineering services to support the landing of in-vehicle applications.
It can be seen that under the general trend of "software-defined cars", the boundaries of hardware, software, and functional scenarios are constantly merging, and the industrial division of labor has changed from a chained linear level to a networked collaborative cooperation. Here comes a new challenge.
Faced with a complex ecosystem, it is difficult for a single enterprise to independently complete products and open up the entire industry chain of smart cars. In many fields such as core chips, operating systems, complex middleware, communication technology, and cross-domain functions, the support and joint construction of ecological partners are needed.
With 28 years of deep cultivation in the field of automotive electronics, United Electronics has quickly formed a reference architecture and system solutions through pre-integration and pre-verification methods to meet market needs and explore more new business models. In the future, it will continue to build the field of intelligent network connection The innovative workshop, joint development and joint promotion with ecological partners, to achieve value co-creation.