• Collaboration in the age of the software-defined vehicle (SDV) was initially met with reluctance from OEMs and Tier-I suppliers.
• The SDV is forcing an industry-wide cultural change and NXP’s new foundational platform makes that idea of collaboration an easier pill to swallow.
• Through the NXP CoreRide platform, hardware costs come down due to the consolidation of compute power.

The latest NXP CoreRide platform is riding the wave of collaboration that has overtaken the entire automotive industry. Collaboration in the age of the software-defined vehicle (SDV), of course, was initially met with reluctance from OEMs and Tier-I suppliers, who have historically competed in aggressive ways shrouded in secrecy. The SDV is forcing an industry-wide cultural change and NXP’s new foundational platform makes that idea of collaboration an easier pill to swallow.

Source: NXP

This new hardware structure presents some key benefits for OEMs:

• Flexible architecture design in an open software environment
• Reduced vehicle development time
• Mixed criticality and fidelity: QM to ASIL-D
• Isolation execution environment for freedom of interference
  • This simply means that certain non-core functionalities can be shut down or meddled with without affecting the critical responsibilities of the vehicle.
• Hardware separation of memory, core and peripherals, all in one SoC

This platform marries the NXP S32N hardware with an advanced software system through a variety of partners, which also provides several benefits:

• Advanced security layer protecting data on the device and in the cloud
• Vehicle state management that works in tandem with the isolation execution environment to address issues with over-the-air updates
• Data intelligence and collection working in tandem with edge AI/ML to understand vehicle usage and system impact alongside real-time diagnostics

Source: Counterpoint Research

NXP and its partners in this venture have made digital-twin technology and virtualization available on the platform to test and verify updates during development. All these developments appear as a stark contrast to the rigid past of automotive OEMs. A new era of agile development is upon us.

While automakers have been reluctant to change quickly, they recognize the emerging revenue opportunities enabled by the addition of new features via subscription services over the full life of the vehicle. There is one consistent characteristic that remains true across all auto OEMs – they watch their bottom lines very carefully. Through the NXP CoreRide platform, hardware costs come down due to the consolidation of compute power. However, NXP and its partners now must urge OEMs to reinvest those savings in future-proofing their systems, leaving headroom for the incorporation of more advanced features in the form of over-the-air updates.

Key Takeaways

• NXP has created a flexible platform with a large ecosystem for OEMs to tap into and quickly collaborate with to speed up time to market for new products. This comes as OEMs and Tier-1’s are struggling to solve the complexities of moving from domain to zonal to centralized architecture and ultimately delaying the adoption of SDVs.
• The CoreRide platform aims to reduce the friction that SDV development brings and has propelled itself ahead of other foundational semiconductor players such as Infineon. It has taken this step forward, but recognized the need to be able to integrate solutions from the likes of Qualcomm and NVIDIA whose solutions can work on top of this foundational platform.
• The automotive industry needs collaboration now more than ever and this venture brings together a large ecosystem of hardware and software solution providers working together towards a common goal. A couple of decades ago, this would have been laughed off a possibility. NXP is helping to make that dream of efficient collaboration a reality.

This platform is actively being integrated into future vehicle designs and will start appearing in production vehicles sometime in 2027. A long form report on the CoreRide platform can be found here.