The Future of Transportation Is Being Built on Arm
Imagine if your car was more like your smartphone, with the same potential to transform your life and the world around you. This potential is increasingly being realized, and today your car isn’t just a mode of transportation, but a powerful computing device that’s keeping you safe, informed, moving and connected, while also communicating with the transportation infrastructure in ways that benefit you and other drivers.
While it may not be obvious, we’re already far down this road. A vehicle’s sensors make us safer drivers, informing us of our surroundings through infotainment systems that not only make our ride more pleasant, but also notify us of problems with the vehicle or when the driver needs to exercise caution in various conditions. And digital technologies have made combustion engines cleaner and more efficient and have paved the way for electric vehicles (EVs) that will eventually drive themselves.
Automotive innovation built on Arm
These automotive innovations are happening today because of Arm, a transformative British technology company that, until recently, has been one of the world’s best-kept technology secrets.
Arm microprocessor chip architecture represents the world’s largest computational footprint. Arm technology underpinned the smartphone revolution, and it is ubiquitous in IoT, embedded, mobile and automotive applications and the world’s global computing infrastructure. Its global ecosystem of more than 1,000 technology partners ships 30 billion Arm-based chips each year.
Since its founding in 1990, Arm has supported automotive designers with technology products and solutions, scaling over time to give vehicle engineers and developers unparalleled flexibility and choice in building their products. Arm’s vast footprint means that:
- Every 50 seconds, an Arm-based processor is installed in a car.
- The top 15 automotive silicon partners license Arm intellectual property (IP).
- More than 85% of infotainment systems and more than 50% of advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) are based on Arm technology.
Arm—which was founded in an old turkey barn and employed just 12 people at its start—is now a major force enabling the future designs of automotive computing platforms.
Standards drive monumental change
As cars’ computing systems become increasingly complex, Arm has brought the industry together to manage this complexity and make it easier for software developers to design new functionality into vehicles.
In 2021, Arm, in collaboration with leaders across the automotive industry, founded the SOAFEE (Scalable Open Architecture for Embedded Edge)1 initiative, which recognizes the increasing complexity of software code for the cars of the future. It helps developers by providing a standardized software architecture to support the building of automotive applications—many of which are critical to safety—as more software is added to vehicles.
These and other collaborative technology efforts are already paying off. Arm initially worked with Cruise2, an autonomous vehicle company, to develop a sensor solution using Arm-based chips, and this collaboration has expanded to increase the efficiency and performance of the Cruise autonomous computing platform. STEER3, an autonomous startup, has also partnered with Arm to develop automated parking solutions using ADAS technology.
In the context of SOAFEE, Arm and Amazon Web Services (AWS)4 created a proof-of-concept design using automotive software workloads, which was developed and tested in the cloud and then deployed to vehicles to showcase the ease with which automotive developers can design on Arm.
The future of automotive computing runs on Arm
Such technological innovations, driven by industry partnerships and collaboration, are transforming automotive design and manufacturing. The acceleration of innovation means that vehicles are no longer products of a traditional design process that has typically taken five to seven years to finalize and implement.
Today’s consumers are clamoring for a smartphone-like experience in their vehicles and desire more frequent updates to vehicle features and capabilities, and this has changed how automotive developers think about their work. They’re now looking at vehicles as computing platforms that innovate with software and update features and functions with a touch of a button—known in the industry as software-defined vehicles (SDVs)5.
The software-defined future
This shift has transformative consequences not only for consumers, but also society. Continuous innovation is unleashing new business models for vehicle manufacturers, which have an ongoing relationship with consumers via regular software updates; each time software is downloaded to your car, new features appear that improve the driving experience—and bring auto manufacturers new monetization opportunities.
Vehicles will continue to become more adaptable, with software packages finely tuned for seasons and terrain and customized to the driver. As this era of software-defined vehicles evolves, it has the potential to change the automotive market and society on a grand scale.
The autonomous possibilities
The proliferation of autonomous, connected vehicles will mean that cities can reconsider the roles of parking lots, roads and streets. Vehicles will become safer, more efficient and cleaner.
New business models will emerge beyond the automotive industry, with travel and insurance among the related industries that could be transformed thanks to autonomous driving. Ultimately, someday, we’ll hop in a vehicle, tell it where we want to go and safely go to sleep for a long overnight trip if need be.
The road ahead
This is the vision of Arm and its vast ecosystem of innovators and entrepreneurs, though it is a formidable challenge. A car today already has 100 million lines of software code—more than a Boeing 7876—and it will be five times that by the time we get to fully autonomous vehicles. But a computing environment built on the world’s most ubiquitous computing architecture will help us get there.
Systems and software built on Arm help innovators scale their ambitions securely and efficiently, and will help conquer that mountain of code in the coming years. The vibrant future of automotive innovation is evolving, built on a common computing architecture and a confluence of motivated software development communities with a shared vision.
Arm is dedicated to leading industry collaboration and delivering the computing power, efficiency and standards required to accelerate and sustain our automotive future. Cars and trucks may run on gas or electricity—but all the vehicles will run on Arm.
This article was written and supplied by Arm.
