In connected car news are Lynk, Elektrobit, QT Company, LiveOne, ZYNC, Macronix’s, Renesas and Aurora.
In this Article
Lynk Wins MBZ Car2Space
Lynk Global, Inc. (Lynk), the world’s leading satellite-direct-to-phone telecoms company, announced that it has won the first-prize award for the Mercedes-Benz car2space Challenge at INNOspace Masters. Lynk beat out applicants from around the globe for its innovative technology connecting cars to the company’s growing constellation of satellite cell towers in space. Lynk received its award this week in Berlin at the INNOspace Masters Conference and Awards Ceremony 2022.
Elektrobit & QT Co Partner for Next-Gen Digital Cockpits
Elektrobit, a visionary global supplier of embedded and connected software products for the automotive industry, and The Qt Company announced a collaboration to make it easier for carmakers to cost-effectively develop next-generation digital cockpits. The companies’ combined solution brings together the Qt Device Creation framework and the NXP i.MX 8 Series Applications Processor with Elektrobit’s EB tresos software for AUTOSAR development and user interface engineering services. The offering provides a unique, turnkey approach for carmakers seeking to develop state-of-the-art human-machine interfaces (HMIs) using off-the-shelf software and hardware.
As driver demand for immersive digital experiences and advanced features grows, the digital cockpit has become a vital and very appealing component in automobiles. The market is expected to realize a compound annual growth rate of 13 percent through 2027, according to research firm Mordor Intelligence, and all automakers are seeking more efficient and affordable approaches to develop advanced in-vehicle experiences.
The Qt-Elektrobit offering is one of the first commercial solutions enabling HMI runtime on the AUTOSAR architecture. It eliminates the costs, complexities and time requirements of using a hypervisor, and can run on a single, multi-core processor. This streamlined approach helps accelerate the overall development process and speed time to market of advanced HMIs. The Qt Device Creation framework enables the creation of rich user interfaces for embedded platforms. The EB tresos AUTOSAR architecture stack adds to it the latest security and safety capabilities, supporting requirements up to ASIL-D on limited-resource microcontroller units, as well as on multi-core SOCs. The offering includes access to Elektrobit’s highly experienced user interface engineering services team. Furthermore, additional functional software from third parties such as Continental Automotive can be integrated, such as Linux Instrument Cluster, software defined Radio, Driver Monitoring and eTravel Companion, just to name a few applications.
LiveOne Partners with ZYNC of MBZ Audio/Video
LiveOne (Nasdaq: LVO), a creator-first, music, entertainment and technology platform focused on delivering premium experiences and content worldwide through memberships and live and virtual events, announced it partnered with the leading in-car entertainment platform ZYNC to exclusively deliver personalized in-car audio and video music entertainment. The deal will see LiveOne’s streaming content roll out on ZYNC-enabled Mercedes-Benz vehicles in late 2022 – with additional electric and autonomous driving vehicles to be announced later this year.
This partnership will provide ZYNC customers with a seamless immersive in-car digital entertainment experience featuring LiveOne’s premium and original content including live and on-demand concerts, music documentaries, vodcasts from PodcastOne talent, pay-per-view events, festivals, virtual meet and greets and more.
Macronix’s NVM Selected by Renesas
Macronix International Co., Ltd. (TSE: 2337), a leading integrated device manufacturer in the non-volatile memory (NVM) market, announced that its MX25UW51245G Serial NOR Flash memory has been selected by Renesas Electronics Corporation for reference designs based on the Vehicle Computer Generation 4 (VC4) chipset. The high-performance MX25UW51245G will provide the VC4 platform, based on Renesas R-Car S4 system on a chip (SoC), with critical memory that enables fast boot-up times in automotive-computing designs.
Fast, reliable flash memory is essential to rapidly booting VC4-based systems, allowing them to adhere to real-time computing requirements. The MX25UW51245G, which can achieve up to 400MB/s read throughput and features low random latency, provides VC4 reference boards the flash storage needed for initial boot of the R-Car S4 SoC.
“Macronix and Renesas continue to enjoy a collaborative relationship, and we’re once again joining forces to bring our respective technologies together and empowering designers with advance automotive-electronics solutions,” said Macronix Vice President of Marketing F.L. Ni. “The VC4 evaluation platform featuring our MX25UW51245G will help unleash the power of the R-Car S4 SoC and VC4 in next-generation automotive systems.”
“The Renesas VC4 evaluation platform streamlines the development of automotive gateway and zone controller systems that can leverage the performance and safety features in both R-Car S4 SoC and MX25UW51245G,” said Takashi Yasumasu, Vice President of Automotive Core Technology Development Division at Renesas.
A core member of Macronix’s highly efficient NOR flash memory line featuring its OctaBus™ interface, the MX25UW51245G features 512Mb density, an Automotive Grade 1 temperature range of -40 ℃ to +125 ℃ and provides functional safety up to Automotive Safety Integrity Level D (ASIL D). The memory’s quality and performance are enhanced substantially by Macronix’s high efficient technology and know how.
The VC4 system is based on a complete Renesas chipset, the centerpiece of which is the R-Car S4 with 8x Cortex®A55 cores which features 8MB of SRAM, advanced cybersecurity and a rich selection of automotive interfaces. The VC4 provides functional safety up to ASIL D, along with the capability for simulating a wide range of connectivity inside the vehicle thereby allowing developers a rich environment for rapid prototyping. It offers an three-port Gigabit Ethernet switch and an integrated RH850 MCU functionality, which drastically reduces the customer’s bill of material.
Macronix and Renesas have a rich history of complementary products and evaluation solutions. Macronix is also a member of Renesas RZ Partner Ecosystem Solutions program and the R-Car Consortium, and a broad range of its flash memory products are represented in several Renesas RZ evaluation boards, including the OctaBus, ArmorFlash™ and e.MMC™ families.
The growing complexity of automotive applications require real-time control without sacrificing performance. This can only be achieved with modern multi-core RH850 Automotive MCUs from Renesas. IAR Systems® is the only tool vendor to deliver development tools for the entire line-up of Renesas MCUs, and the latest releases strengthen the long-standing collaboration.
The IAR Embedded Workbench for RH850 and IAR Build Tools for RH850 have been upgraded to the latest technology platforms, including the latest C/C++ language (library support for the C++17 language standard), which will allow developers to build far more advanced code to handle more complex tasks.
Today’s release also includes 64-bit IDE & Editor enhancements with Dark Mode, and cross-platform IAR Build Tools streamlined for automated build and test processes in frameworks built on Ubuntu, Red Hat, or Windows.
The release also provides developers with extensions for Visual Studio Code to meet increasing customer demand. The extensions are compatible with the latest versions of IAR Embedded Workbench, and IAR Build Tools for RH850, made available seamlessly at Visual Studio Code Marketplace.
The latest version of IAR Toolchain for RH850 supports all the latest Renesas RH850 high-performance and scalable automotive multicore MCUs.
“Our investments in Embedded Development Solutions for RH850 in the latest technology platforms will improve our joint customers’ ability to innovate by simplifying the move to – and use of – high-performance multi-core MCUs”, said Rafael Taubinger, Senior Product Marketing Manager at IAR Systems.
The IAR Toolchain provides exceptional design flexibility for embedded developers working with the extensive Renesas product portfolio. It also delivers outstanding performance and enables customers to easily switch between different architectures and choose the one best suited for a specific application while using the same development tools. The products from IAR Systems are proven to simplify the reuse of code, shorten time to market, and reduce design time and project cost while improving productivity, allowing developers to focus on accelerated innovation.
Since the beginning, IAR Systems and Renesas have had a profound and robust relationship based on trust, thought leadership, and a mutual passion for innovation and customer success. As a Renesas Alliance Partner, IAR Systems are committed to continuing to supply high-end tools for all Renesas MCUs, beyond the +4000 Renesas devices already supported.////
Aurora Labs Funded
Aurora Labs, founded in 2016 by Zohar Fox (CEO) and Ori Lederman (COO), announced today that it has secured $63 million through a Series C financing round led by Moore Strategic Ventures (“MSV”). Also participating in the round was existing investor Porsche Automobil Holding SE (“Porsche SE”), majority owner of VW Group and Colmobil Corp, Israel’s leading automotive importer and distributor. Colmobil Corp is led by the Harlap family who were early investors in Mobileye, SolarEdge and Via, amongst others. This round brings the total investment in Aurora Labs to approximately $100 million. Aurora Labs holds 90 patents and has 15 customer projects globally.
Aurora Labs’ AI-based Vehicle Software Intelligence has reinvented how automotive companies, Tier-1 suppliers, silicon vendors and enterprises develop, certify and diagnose software, and conduct over-the-air updates. The company’s solutions are being used by global automotive and device manufacturers to continuously collect actionable data and obtain a deep understanding of line-of-code software behavior. This level of understanding helps the software development teams streamline the processes of development, testing, integration, WP.29 compliance, continuous certification, and on-the-road, zero-downtime, over-the-air (OTA) updating. The solution also keeps software safe and secure from faults and cybersecurity attacks, while allowing manufacturers to continuously add new features and functions extending the life of the device and enhancing user experiences.
Insight into automotive software behavior is crucial as more lines of code from a growing list of entities – Tier 1s, open-source, and automakers themselves – make the software-defined vehicle a reality. Aurora Labs’ AI-based Vehicle Software Intelligence offers significant economic benefits to the auto industry with a clear cost-effective value proposition, saving up to 98% of hardware and data transmission costs for software updates, and up to 30% in software engineering hours saving manufacturers billions of dollars on their bill of materials and data communications costs and enabling recurring revenue streams.