SOAFEE Hits Three-year Milestone with No Signs of Slowing Down

News highlights:

• On its third anniversary, SOAFEE continues to lead industry collaboration on software-defined, AI-enabled vehicles  
• New members, including Geely, General Motors and Tata Motors, grow the total global SOAFEE community to more than 120 leading players
• Future technical developments through SOAFEE.next include a new reference design for AI-enabled automotive development based on the latest Armv9 automotive technologies, integration of virtual platforms, and future Armv9-based Compute Subsystems

Four years ago in a meeting with a leading automotive OEM, they outlined the three barriers to deploying the software-defined vehicle at scale. It echoed feedback we’d had from many other OEMs in the industry, and it was clear that Arm and our ecosystem were uniquely positioned to deliver the solution needed. Those requirements were:

1. Being able to use and port the same software across different hardware platforms in all cars from low to high cost;
2. Having software consistency in the cloud and at the edge (in the car); and
3. Keeping pace with the growing demand for AI-powered capabilities throughout the vehicle by being able to develop software before the hardware becomes available.

Significant strides made with SOAFEE

Launched soon after, these became the three objectives of SOAFEE (Scalable Open Architecture for Embedded Edge), with significant strides made by the initiative during the past three years. These have been achieved through an unprecedented collaboration involving over 120 members and counting, which span the full automotive ecosystem and value chain, including the recent additions of leading OEMs Geely, General Motors, and Tata Motors.

This SOAFEE membership has already created a brand-new ecosystem of software solutions that will be critical to enabling Arm Compute Subsystems (CSS) for Automotive in 2025 through delivering software consistency to support the silicon development and deployment process.

The SOAFEE.next chapter

The future of SOAFEE is bright and firmly focused on accelerating the creation of impactful technical output from members. This community is keeping pace with ever-changing automotive architectures.  SOAFEE has already embraced the latest Armv9 technologies to scale the deployment of AI-enabled software-defined vehicles (SDVs), while improving accessibility to software solutions through virtual platforms. SOAFEE.next introduces new developments including:

• New Arm Reference Design-1 AE: SOAFEE.next is bringing together reference designs for hardware and software by aligning SOAFEE-based software solutions with the Arm Reference Design-1 AE hardware solution for automotive which leverages the AI, security, safety, and virtualization capabilities of the latest Armv9 technology. This alignment is key, and one of the biggest achievements of the SOAFEE initiative to date, as it enables mixed critical development for hardware and software for a variety of functional safety and application workloads. This means different software-defined functions can run at different levels of safety criticality using the SOAFEE architecture.
• Introducing virtual platforms: Virtual platforms are being integrated into SOAFEE to accelerate the software development process through virtual prototyping without the need for physical silicon. These are being delivered through SOAFEE members, such as Cadence, Corellium, and Siemens, and then integrated with SOAFEE reference implementations to expedite the delivery of new SOAFEE architecture features.
• Building on Blueprints success: The introduction of virtual prototypes is the natural progression following a series of Blueprints from SOAFEE members that leverage the existing SOAFEE architecture to speed time-to-market, such as the inclusion of the mixed critical orchestration PICCOLO project presented by LG Electronics and a mixed-criticality solution implemented using Lingua Franca and presented by Denso. SOAFEE members are actively working on over 30 projects that utilize the SOAFEE architecture and, in collaboration with other members, showcasing these live around the world.
• More ways to validate: SOAFEE.next is also advancing software assurance and services by expanding the validation services of Linaro across all SOAFEE members. This builds on the first SOAFEE Integration Lab with Linaro, which allows members to validate their implementations of the SOAFEE architecture through their remote labs.

Achieving the future SDV vision, together

All these outstanding achievements and exciting future plans bring us closer to the vision of seeing SOAFEE-based software solutions on the road in AI-enabled SDVs. As part of our commitment to this vision, I am thrilled that Suraj Gajendra from my team has been appointed as the new Chairperson of the SOAFEE Governing Body, bringing his extensive industry experience as we drive the next phase of SOAFEE developments.

Bringing AI-enabled SDVs to life requires even more extensive collaboration across the ecosystem that extends beyond SOAFEE, through initiatives like the SDV Alliance launched earlier this year with SOAFEE as a founding member. This Alliance is another opportunity to work alongside important SDV communities including AUTOSAR, COVESA, and Eclipse SDV to make progress in enabling the software-defined future of automotive.

No company can solve the unique software challenges in the automotive industry alone. And I firmly believe that it’s truly exceptional what we can do together, as proven by the past three years of SOAFEE. Together with all the SOAFEE members, we are dedicated to driving the transformation of the automotive industry that runs on Arm. Watch this space – we’ll have more to share soon!