Arm says new Zena platform can cut car development time by 50%

[Bob O'Donnell]

The big picture: While people have been discussing the automotive market as the next big tech-device opportunity for some time now, in reality, today's cars haven't advanced as much as many had hoped. Sure, we have larger, more sophisticated screens and some assisted driving features, but we've yet to reach the kind of transformative, smartphone-level impact in most of the vehicles we're buying or driving today.

A significant part of the issue lies in the long and tedious automotive development process, particularly in how technology is adopted into modern vehicle platforms. Traditionally, automakers would wait for chip designs to be completed, then integrate individual elements into broader car platforms. Only after that could they begin writing software tailored to those finalized hardware designs.

Last year, Arm took a major step toward shortening the typical 3- to 4-year development cycles by introducing two key innovations. First, it unveiled a full suite of automotive-grade processors and other chip IP (intellectual property) for use in vehicle platforms.

Second, it launched new cloud-based simulation and virtualization platforms in collaboration with major Electronic Design Automation (EDA) providers – Cadence, Synopsys, and Siemens – as well as Amazon's AWS. These tools allow automakers and their partners to begin software development even before Arm-based chips are finalized. The result: up to two years saved in the software development process, significantly accelerating the delivery of advanced vehicle capabilities. (It will be interesting to see how recent export restrictions on EDA software to China may impact these developments for Chinese automakers.)

This year, Arm completed the next phase by integrating its individual automotive cores into more comprehensive system designs that streamline both hardware and software development. In fact, the new offerings enable those stages to happen simultaneously, potentially cutting another 12 months from the typical development timeline.

Under its new Zena brand – focused on Arm-powered automotive silicon designs – the company introduced a vehicular implementation of its Compute Subsystem (CSS) strategy. As with previous markets where Arm rolled out CSS, including datacenters, PCs, and smartphones, the goal is to integrate multiple components around Arm's latest CPU, GPU, and other cores to reduce the complexity, cost, and time involved in designing complete systems.

With Zena, CSS supports a variety of SoC or "chiplet" configurations, combining CPUs, GPUs, image signal processors (ISPs), security cores, I/O components, inter-chip connectivity, and more. Specifically, the new Zena design includes support for a 16-core v9 Cortex-A720AE CPU, chip-to-chip coherence via the CMN S3AE, a real-time safety island using the Cortex-R82AE, and the ability to link multiple Zena designs via UCIe, among other features.

The result is a range of complete starting points for hardware development and corresponding software. These systems offer extensive customization options for semiconductor and automotive manufacturers, with open interfaces to connect a variety of AI accelerators, image processors, graphics components, and more. Different configurations can support everything from enhanced user interaction and in-vehicle infotainment (IVI) systems to assisted and autonomous driving features.

Arm believes it can drive the creation of what they're calling an "AI-defined car," which builds on the current concept of software-defined vehicles (SDVs) and brings more advanced AI processing into the experience

In fact, Arm believes it can drive the creation of what they're calling an "AI-defined car," which builds on the current concept of software-defined vehicles (SDVs) and brings more advanced AI processing into the experience. Given how rapidly AI has been integrated into other computing platforms, that seems a logical move – and the safety-focused capabilities Arm has integrated into the core Zena system will likely prove to be even more important here.

On a practical level, Zena also brings increased design efficiency to carmakers. It offers savings not only in time but also in the resources required to develop new vehicle platforms. This efficiency enables automakers and Tier 1 suppliers to produce more vehicle platforms with fewer people and in less time. In fact, Arm estimates that Zena CSS platforms can reduce development costs and resource requirements by up to 20%.

For car buyers like us, that translates directly into getting later generations of technology into new car designs instead of buying cars that typically had semiconductor capabilities that were typically 2-3 years behind smartphones and other digital devices.

For carmakers, this speeds time to market and allows companies to reuse certain hardware and software efforts across multiple product lines – instead of having to create new chip system designs and software for each range of models. Given how critical – and brand-defining – the digital capabilities of cars have become, this makes these development advances extremely important.

Strategically, this announcement is significant for Arm as it advances the company's move from supplying individual chip IP to delivering more comprehensive system designs. This vertical expansion not only allows Arm to charge more for its offerings but also strengthens the role of its platforms across all the markets it serves – including automotive.

With shipments to the automotive sector increasing by more than 300% over the past five years and support for 94% of global automakers, Arm's direction clearly aligns with market demand, making this a win-win proposition.

As important as CSS platforms have proven to be in other markets where Arm has introduced the concept, the automotive industry may stand to gain the most. The notoriously slow development times for car technology have been a challenge for many automakers and their major suppliers and the dramatic potential speed-up that Arm is bringing to them with Zena should prove to be a real difference maker.

Bob O'Donnell is the founder and chief analyst of TECHnalysis Research, LLC a technology consulting firm that provides strategic consulting and market research services to the technology industry and professional financial community. You can follow him on X @bobodtech

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Arm says new Zena platform can cut car development time by 50%

 

[NumberNine]

Whoever pitched the "internet of things" probably forgot to mention that its purpose is tracking everything you do and selling your habits to the highest bidder. At least they're no longer pretending that the tech exists for the benefit of consumers. All this tech exists for the benefit of manufacturers and insurance companies, by the way.

That's a fact.

The primary goal of current automotive technology is to transform your vehicle ownership experience into an ongoing revenue stream, be it your money or your data, they don't care either way. They must hit the margins and if they can't be sued for it, they will do it.

Don't mistake this for an indication that new technology is coming to make your life better. That's not what this is for.

 

[SRB]

Considering that many of the car's system are developed by a number of different companies that change from make to make, I'm not sure how Arm is going to get buy in from hundreds of suppliers to interface with their systems, Not to mention, a good deal of brand definition is due to their choices of suppliers for the user interface (Blackberry, Google, in house, Bosch, etc.).

Not to mention that the images imply that Arm wants to do the physical design of physical interiors, exteriors, controls, etc. I don't see anyone flocking to turn over design to AI any time soon.

When we were having some unusual engine noise problems with some vehicles, an engineer from Detroit told us that one specific problem came from new engineers that used all the latest tech to help reduce engine weight.
He also told us that they didn't have the experienced senior engineers around to tell them where the software was removing metal where it should not have.

 

[p51d007]

Personally, I wish they would take the majority of "tech" OUT of vehicles!
People are depending too much on this garbage instead of actually OPERATING
a vehicle. Then, when some stupid sensor goes bad, it is a multi-thousand dollar
repair! Coworker had a bad headlight. It had sensors, LED turn signals and of
course the headlight. BEFORE 2018, you could just reach in and replace the head
light. But AFTER 2018, you can't. You have to replace the entire headlight assembly.
$1400 bucks!

 

[toooooot]

I am strongly against cars that are one major block of tech that must be replaced as a whole rather than repaired.
Ok, let them sell those, but why dont they shut *** ***k up about ecology and care for the planet.
It is the biggest lie that they are doing anything positive when they create technology that when fails, requires to throw away pounds of perfectly working parts.

Irreparable cars are bad. They should be all sold with a warning: "this product creates a higher amount of waste than usual."

 

[Theinsanegamer]

I am strongly against cars that are one major block of tech that must be replaced as a whole rather than repaired.
Ok, let them sell those, but why dont they shut *** ***k up about ecology and care for the planet.
It is the biggest lie that they are doing anything positive when they create technology that when fails, requires to throw away pounds of perfectly working parts.

Irreparable cars are bad. They should be all sold with a warning: "this product creates a higher amount of waste than usual."

Because if they ACTUALLY cared about ecology, they would keep making parts for older cars, avoiding the emissions from making newer vehicles, and focus on things like working from home that do far more to cut emissions than 5% better efficiency.

But these things empower the average person and remove control from the corpo, so they are VERBOTEN and must be removed at all costs.

It's the same thing with PCs. Planned obsolescence is anti-environment at it's core yet is readily embraced by companies like MS. It shows where their true intentions lay.