On October 30 and 31, we presented our L4Re Micro Hypervisor to a very interested international audience in Detroit. The L4Re Micro Hypervisor was on display several times, running on the NXP S32Z Cortex-R52 platform and hosting several virtual machines.
On our booth, our demo showed the SOAFEE OpenAD Kit blueprint with Autoware running inside a virtualized Zephyr, running next to other VMs with FreeRTOS and other Zephyr guests. The Autoware VM is controlling steering and acceleration of an autonomous driving car.
As a SOAFEE member and Arm partner, we showcased our L4Re Hypervisor framework together with the SOAFEE reference platform EWAOL, demonstrating how virtual machines can be seamlessly operated across different platform stacks such as NXP S32Z using Cortex-R52 cores and Arm’s Cortex-A cores. This allows flexible system designs for various applications, including navigation and safety-critical functions.
SOAFEE members are building a standardized architecture for Software Defined Vehicles (SDVs), where vehicle functions are predominantly implemented by software. SOAFEE’s cloud-native platform approach enables development in the cloud and deployment on edge devices such as vehicle’s high-performance computing systems.
The SOAFEE architecture enables safety-critical and non-safety-critical applications to run securely and efficiently on a single platform, meeting real-time requirements and adhering to safety standards such as ISO 26262.
The SOAFEE Blueprints are reference setups that focus on specific use cases for SDVs. These blueprints validate the concepts and principles of the SOAFEE architecture in real-world scenarios, providing examples of how applications can be developed in the cloud and deployed at the edge, such as in vehicles, without requiring the full DevOps cycle.
Our CTO Adam Lackorzynski had the honor to share the stage with NXP colleagues in their presentation “Isolation and Virtualization for Real-Time Cores”. They discussed how virtualization is essential for building flexible and SDV-enabled system architectures, and how our open-source L4Re Operating System Framework exactly provides the decoupling of hardware and software to create those well-structured software architectures, making design easier and implementation more flexible.
The renowned NXP Technology Days were once again a fantastic event that saw over 1,000 attendees. Our demo sparked many engaging discussions on automotive virtualization and SDV challenges. Collaboration on innovative solutions is the best (and probably the only) way to make the future of automotive technology a reality!