Laying the foundation for user-defined vehicles, extending Level 2+ automated driving and enabling the zonal architectures that are shaping tomorrow’s connected vehicles are big jobs. These undertakings call for cross collaboration with a strong technology ecosystem. NXP is proud to work with an elite team of software and hardware companies to help BlueBox 3.0 deliver its full potential to our joint customers.
Collaboration on Safe, Reliable and Scalable Autonomous Driving Solutions
NXP and Kalray are collaborating to deliver on a common hardware and software platform for safe, reliable and scalable autonomous driving solutions. These solutions encompass the near-term delivery of L2+ and full automation in the long-term. Within the NXP BlueBox Platform and integration in the software development environment, Kalray MPPA
(massively parallel processor array) intelligently accelerates the perception and modeling required for the next steps in the automated driving roadmap.
Kalray’s MPPA intelligent processors ease the development of safe and ready-to-certify solutions, thanks to its deterministic architecture, its ability to isolate execution domains and guarantee freedom from interference together with its compliance with the ISO 26262 standard.
MPPA processors are not only capable of executing AI algorithms but can also simultaneously execute a wide set of different processing such as mathematical algorithms, signal processing and networking software stacks with different levels of criticality on the same chip. This heterogenous multi-processing capability is also a critical requirement for autonomous vehicles, and is a unique capability of Kalray’s Coolidge
, 3rd generation of MPPA processor.
Memory and Automotive Experts Delivering Optimized Memory Products for Automotive Applications
At the heart of BlueBox 3.0 is a powerful combination of leading memory and storage technologies fueling the platform’s advanced automotive high-performance computing. These include Micron Technology’s high-speed NOR flash, e.MMC flash, NVMe SSDs, DDR4 and LPDDR4x DRAM, which work in concert to drive NXP Layerscape LX2160A’s and S32G’s processors. These gains enhance the intelligence and connectivity possible for next-generation vehicle architectures and ADAS systems. Micron’s memory and storage is critical for managing the vast amounts of automotive data generated by smart radars, sensors and cameras—enabling scalable semi-autonomous and autonomous applications.
“With automotive compute and connectivity demand on the rise, the automotive industry is undergoing one of the most significant transformations since the invention of cars themselves,” said Kris Baxter, corporate vice president and general manager of Micron’s Embedded Business Unit. “Traditional distributed architecture can no longer keep pace with the innovation today’s consumers expect in their vehicles. By delivering our leading-edge automotive-grade memory and storage as part of NXP BlueBox 3.0, we are arming industry leaders with the powerful compute platform they need to design safe and intelligent vehicles.”
Micron’s broad portfolio of volatile and nonvolatile memory products are rigorously tested and optimized for automotive applications to ensure they can function in extreme environments. Micron automotive memory and storage solutions offer the increased reliability, fast boot times, high bandwidth, low power and small footprint required by today’s compute-intensive automotive applications.
Micron has 30 years of automotive expertise, innovation and engineering experience and is the market share leader, supplying its automotive memory and storage to all leading automotive manufacturers. Micron is one of the first memory solutions providers to earn International Automotive Task Force (IATF) 16949:2016 quality certification, a clear reflection of Micron’s relentless commitment to quality. For more information on Micron Technology’s automotive memory solutions, visit: https://www.micron.com/solutions/automotive.
Specialists in Motion Planning for Automated Driving
Embotech specializes in motion planning for autonomous driving. Its success lies in the safe execution of sophisticated decision-making algorithms that ultimately send steering, accelerating and braking commands to the vehicle. Embotech’s software runs on the powerful NXP LX2160A to enable high performance automated driving. Additionally, in the event of a system malfunction, the software runs the firm’s backup motion planner concurrently on the safe and redundant NXP S32G. This safety backup is an essential step towards achieving ASIL B functional safety certification, which Embotech aims to achieve by the end of 2021. BlueBox 3.0 is an ideal platform for safe and certifiable autonomous driving collaboration. For more information visit: https://www.embotech.com/products/prodriver/overview/.
Pressing the Boundaries of Precision Traffic and Sensor Simulation
dSPACE’s data-driven development toolchain empowers safe autonomous driving. The physics-based ASM traffic solution supports the creation of complex road networks, whereby designers can define sophisticated traffic scenarios on virtual roads among static and movable objects, like traffic signs and pedestrians. Additionally, physical sensors (radar, lidar and camera) can be simulated for both software-in-the-loop (SIL) and hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) testing of complex autonomous driving and ADAS systems. dSPACE supports all raw data sensor interfaces including SerDes and MIPI CSI-2℠.
Delivering High-Performance Middleware for Real-Time Critical Systems
eProsima is focused on high-performance middleware. Its main product, eProsima Fast DDS, is a high-performance middleware for real-time and critical systems. It powers the communications between the different components of the BlueBox 3.0. NXP and eProsima joined forces to create a strikingly fast PCIe transport for eProsima Fast DDS, to get the most of the BlueBox hardware. eProsima is used by tens of thousands of developers to create real-time high-performance distributed systems for critical applications in sectors such as defense, robotics and automotive. Learn more about eProsima at https://www.eprosima.com/ and eProsima Fast DDS at https://www.eprosima.com/index.php/products-all/eprosima-fast-dds.
The Edge Case state-of-the-art live safety case software, developed by Edge Case Research, is a standards-based validation platform designed to track metrics and provide insights to inform safe deployment decisions. Our partnership with NXP leverages the strengths of our architecture and delivers a step forward in accelerating the future of highly automated vehicle safely.
Delivering Safe Mixed-Criticality Software
Green Hills Software and NXP have collaborated to enable engineers to build mixed-criticality software for highly automated vehicle systems running on the BlueBox autonomous driving development platform from NXP. The combined solution is powered by the ASIL-D INTEGRITY real-time operating system and provides a trusted software foundation to bridge development programs to production readiness. Critical applications such as path planning, health monitoring and DDS communications run side-by-side with less critical frameworks such as Linux, all on the same processor. Advanced development tools from Green Hills help speed debugging and deployment on the heterogenous multicore system.
Addressing the Full Breadth of Autonomous Development Through Software
Intempora’s software can address all stages of the development process for autonomous driving from prototyping to testing and validation. RTMaps (real-time multisensor applications), a component-based development and execution environment, allows developers to easily develop and deploy algorithms for autonomous driving that respond promptly and precisely to the perceived environment with real or simulated data. As a versatile and powerful framework RTMaps can take advantage of the hardware acceleration and the full processing capabilities offered by the BlueBox.
Learn more at https://intempora.com.
Automotive-Grade Enabling Advanced Zonal E/E Architectures with Connectivity Software for Electric and Autonomous Vehicles
Real-time innovations (RTI) has integrated the power and functionality of its DDS-based Connext Drive connectivity software with NXP’s BlueBox 3.0. Connext Drive is the standard-based software framework used globally in vehicle production environments. It manages complex data distribution for real-time connectivity in the autonomous systems used globally in vehicle production environments. By running Connext Drive natively through S32G vehicle network processors, RTI and NXP are enabling a next-generation zonal E/E architecture through a real-time, scalable and safety-certifiable platform that connects the entire system from safety domain to backend.
In addition, RTI and NXP are working to integrate Connext Drive with time sensitive networking (TSN) on the S32G network processor and SJA1110 network switch. This aims to provide highly-reliable and predictable delivery, time synchronization and bandwidth allocation for TSN applications while expanding functionality through redundancy, reliability, monitoring and content-based filtering. www.RTI.com.
Edge-AI Software Achieves Higher Accuracy for L2+ Models and Runs Them Faster at the Edge
RTeraki’s edge-AI software delivers higher accuracy to customers’ AI-models. It does so by intelligently pre-processing and selecting relevant information from sensor data to train and run AI-models efficiently in the car. The lightweight footprint allows to run it in real-time on low-powered, production hardware. The Teraki embedded Client runs on S32G, inside the BlueBox, where it performs sensor fusion of e.g. IMU-Camera, camera-radar and camera-lidar signals. The intelligent pre-processing enables this to be done on one Arm-core of the BlueBox. Customers’ AI-models are trained 10X-20X faster, and more importantly, achieve 10%-30% higher accuracy. This is essential for better sensor fusion, ADAS, AD and increased safety.
How it works? https://vimeo.com/392660558
https://www.teraki.com/gallery/flyers/
MicroSys provides a broad product portfolio beginning from Systems on Module up to full turnkey systems. NXP’s Arm based CPUs and controllers are the foundation of MicroSys miriac branded modules and system level products. NXP’s S32 Platform with its integrated and heterogenous configuration of microprocessors and controllers for automated driving, as well as the S32G for next-gen gateways in vehicle applications are the core of the miriac MPX-S32G274A SoM, which is incorporated into the NXP BlueBox 3.0.
The collaboration enables a short-term and low risk development of products that target segments in automation, avionics, automotive, medical, railways & transportation, construction and defense market respect for effectual norms (ISO13849, ISO26262, IEC61508, DO-160, EN50155, ISO13485,…) and requirements (extended temperature, rugged design,…). For more information visit: https://microsys.de/produkte/system-on-modules/armr-automotive/miriactm-mpx-s32g274a.html?L=1.
OEMs are currently primarily focused on demonstrating ADAS functionality and validating new EE architectures like zonal architecture. These ground-breaking architectures will soon require safety and security certification. ProvenRun (www.provenrun.com) is collaborating with NXP and its partners to address these requirements with their secure EE ProvenCore.