Automotive Virtualization by Xen: EPAM Enables XEN Hypervisor on Renesas R-Car S4 System-on-Chip
Digital transformation presents the automotive industry with a major and urgent challenge, and that is developing the software-defined vehicle (SDV) of the future. This is no small feat as automotive manufacturers and suppliers now need to change their existing operating models – gained from more than 100 years of mechanical-centric engineering – to the electrical, software and data engineering-centric models required to power the vehicles of the 21st century.
With the SDV becoming a strategic imperative for the global automotive industry to meet consumer demand for autonomous driving, connectivity, electrification and shared mobility, there is a pressing requirement to manage cost pressures associated with integrating more software and control units into SDV vehicles.
And with the automotive sector being a non-data center use case, leveraging cost-effective automotive software development platforms, such as the Xen open-source hypervisor, provides automakers with an economical option to implement a complete embedded and mobile virtualization stack. Cutting down on the inefficient per-vehicle proprietary software licensing costs improves manufacturers’ long-term profitability and enables them to pass on the cost benefits to consumers.
As part of its contributions to the continued growth of the Xen open-source hypervisor in automotive environments, EPAM has launched the development of the board support package (BSP) required to run the Xen open-source hypervisor on the Renesas advanced R-Car S4 system-on-chip (SoC).
“Enabling the Xen open-source hypervisor to run on the Renesas R-Car S4 SoC is a significant milestone for our EPAM automotive team,” said Alex Agizim, CTO, Automotive and Embedded Systems, EPAM. “By leveraging open-source software, automotive vendors can design their systems in a way that dramatically reduces licensing costs per vehicle compared with similar proprietary solutions, while retaining full control over the source code and satisfying the industry’s functional safety requirements.”
The EPAM-supported Xen open-source hypervisor will enable the configuration of Renesas’ R-Car S4 SoC to provide guest operating systems access to the processor’s embedded automotive functions and peripherals, including the peripheral component interconnect express (PCIe) bus controller and the Renesas original Ethernet Switch hardware. Additionally, EPAM’s support for the Xen hypervisor will enable automotive vendors to use open-source software for mixed-functional safety vehicle systems.
“The Renesas R-Car-S4 enables automotive manufacturers to launch car servers with improved performance, high-speed networking, enhanced security and functional safety levels. These requirements are becoming increasingly important as electronic and electrical architectures evolve into domains and zones,” said Takeshi Fuse, Head of Business Development and Marketing, Automotive Solution Business Unit at Renesas. “Moreover, the R-Car S4 solution allows designers to re-use up to 88 percent of software code developed for 3rd generation R-Car SoCs and RH850 MCU applications. The software package supports the real-time processing with various drivers and basic software such as Linux BSP and hypervisors.”
Hosted by the Linux Foundation, the Xen Project is the leading hypervisor choice for embedded systems due to its maturity, isolation and security features, flexible architecture and open-source community. EPAM, the global leader of the Xen Hypervisor for embedded and automotive, drives the innovation and delivery of this solution.
Earlier this year, EPAM announced a new “AosEdge” vehicle-to-cloud (V2C) platform that represents the next phase in the evolution of connected cars. The AosEdge platform, created in collaboration with Renesas Electronics Corporation, a leading supplier of advanced semiconductor solutions, provides a more efficient way to deliver in-vehicle software and simplifies how different software elements operate within the same environment, making it possible for original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) to develop true software-defined vehicles.
Learn more about how EPAM helps automotive companies face disruption and differentiate their business with innovative, software-defined vehicle solutions: https://www.epam.com/industries/industrial/automotive
