Closed or open, this is a topic that is discussed in almost every industry, and even in every business.
Now, Neusoft Reach has given its own answer: it must be open and must cooperate.
The independence of Huawei's car BU has also prompted everyone to think about how to go about the R&D system of OEMs, how to arrange it, and how to achieve the optimal state of agility and cost efficiency in the future. In the view of Cao Bin, general manager of Neusoft Reach,All industries must have division of labor and cooperation to a certain stage, and they need to rely on ecology to solve cost problems and innovation problems
He hoped,Neusoft Reach can take the lead in grasping the ecological discourse, so it proposed and built an OpenVOC open technology framework
Based on the OpenVOC open technology framework, Neusoft Reach hopes to build an open, win-win, flexible and efficient innovation ecosystem, where third-party developers can more easily participate in the development of intelligent software.
Of course, this is a subversion of the existing traditional way, but it can also generate great energy.
Cao Bin, general manager of Neusoft Reach.
In the future, there will be a lot of people who have no experience in automotive and will play a very important role in this industry”。Cao Bin cited mobile phones as an example, saying that it only provides a platform and carrier, but third-party software, such as WeChat, has more influence than any mobile phone company. It is precisely because of the introduction of the development framework that the future industry dominance, voice, and ecological model will undergo fundamental changes
Why is OpenVOC being introduced?
The reason for launching a new architecture is obviously that the previous architecture does not meet the needs of the moment. Specifically,Solve the problem of difficult decoupling of software and hardware in software development faced by the automotive industry.
Over the years, we feel that the 'software-defined vehicle' is still quite painful." Cao Bin thinksThe most profound problem is that the architecture has not reached a very stable state, and the software development paradigm has not formed a clear, stable, and iterative state
The reason is simple. Before software-defined vehicles, or before the electric intelligence of automobiles, in the traditional automotive EE architecture, each part was relatively independent and the connection between them was relatively simple. For example, the controller is connected via the CAN (Controller Area Network) bus, the sensor via an analog signal, and the actuator via a PWM (Pulse Width Modulation) signal.
As a result, each car company has its own familiar tier1 business, chip companies, etc., forming their own fortresses, and the entire industry is in a relatively stable state, with software efficiency, hardware efficiency, and automobile cost models being relatively stable.
However, it also causes conditions such as low communication efficiency, high failure rate, and difficulty in upgrading
In the past, we have made a lot of attempts in the software development model driven by the traditional ECU or controller form. Cao Bin said, for example, to do a vehicle controller, ** domain control or L2 + autonomous driving domain control, often hundreds or even thousands of people work together, it takes dozens of hours to do a vehicle research and development software, if the test is found to be wrong, you need to start again.
At the same time,Even after the launch of the whole vehicle, the software team of 1,000 people cannot be completely liberated, because there is continuous iteration work in the follow-up, so that many car companies have established software development teams of hundreds or thousands of people
But at this stage, it is not only about innovation, better technology and experience, but also about cost." Cao Bin believes that the original methods and systems cannot be supported, and the contradiction between cost and innovation cannot be broken, and the pressure on the industry will become more and more great.
How to solve the above problems?
The method given by Cao Bin is: division of labor and cooperation. He also believes that in the future, all industries must have division of labor and cooperation to a certain stage, and they need to rely on ecology to solve the problem of cost and innovation.
How to divide labor and cooperate?The first thing to think about is architecturally.
In Cao Bin's view, the next stage of the car will be the development of intelligent travel robots, under this development concept, there will be three configurations of hardware forms: face, the interactive interface between people and vehicles, that is, the cockpit interface;brain, the first supercomputing brain that carries high-performance complex computing and high-security basic logic;body, the relevant area controller responsible for the execution of the action.
On the whole, Brain, as the computing middle platform, efficiently connects Face (IVI) and Body (region controller), so that the software and hardware architecture fully realizes the decoupling of software and hardware, isolates the complexity of the regional controller, and reduces the demand for IVI computing power.
Cao Bin thinksWith the continuous development of intelligent vehicles, FBB hardware configuration has become an inevitable trend in the future. Neusoft Reach hopes to build a first-class supercomputing computer BRAIN that carries all calculations, build a new set of development methods and application frameworks, and achieve full hierarchical decoupling
In this context, Neusoft Reach proposed and built an OpenVOC open technology frameworkThat is, the "hardware form + software architecture" used in the construction of "vehicle core intelligent software functions" on a chip, its software architecture is more open, any application can access all the hardware functions on the car through the software's service interface, and third-party developers can also more easily participate in the development of intelligent software, and open and co-create with automotive engineers
It can be understood as,After the application of the framework, car companies and leading companies only need to focus on the underlying software and necessary functional applications when designing cars, and the upper intelligent driving and cockpit related application software can be handed over to other software developers, so as to achieve rapid development, fast onboarding and rapid iteration
How to better implement OpenVOCs?
To match the OpenVOC Open Technology Framework,Neusoft Reach has upgraded five major components, including NeuSAR, intelligent driving components, scene engines, vehicle-cloud components, and hardware product definitions
First of all, in terms of NeuSAR, a system component for the "next-generation E domain control", in the practice of OpenVOC, the vehicle message bus VMB is newly upgraded, and the characteristics are enhanced for the key requirements of autonomous driving, and the unified communication interface for different heterogeneous systems, physical bus protocols and development systems of the vehicle realizes cross-language development combination, and provides a unified interface for shielding the physical bus and communication protocol for different communication scenarios.
At the same time, NeuSAR upgrades the Python development framework, not only providing access to basic components and services, but also providing Web service invocation methods, through better compatibility with the cloud, flexible handling of cross-domain, cross-functional combination of application software development, and based on the functional characteristics of Python, more AI-biased applications can also more freely and simply implement training data, algorithm combinations, etc., reducing the programming threshold for application developers to 1 2 years.
At the tool chain level, NeuSAR provides a unified basic software configuration interface for cross-domain system functions, covering the complete development process of design, development, debugging, deployment, testing, and integration, and the Xi period for developers to use the tool only takes 6 weeks.
It provides Windows Linux desktop applications and cloud web deployment methods, and supports multiple authorization management methods such as local USBKEY based on remote serversThe latest Neusar devkit toolchain, from"All in one place"Comprehensive upgrades have been carried out in terms of development experience, ecosystem openness, guided interaction, and configuration coverage, so that developers can get started without in-depth knowledge of AUTOSAR, improve application configuration efficiency by 75%, and reduce the knowledge requirements of AUTOSAR methodology by 80%.
Secondly, in terms of the application components for the "intelligent driving developer ecosystem", by presetting the Neusar software development platform module, the Neusoft Reach intelligent driving application component provides partners with customizable application function architecture, supporting component libraries, and development-friendly tools to solve more than 80% of engineering tasks.
Under this component configuration, the application algorithm architecture developed by the original customized chain is transformed into a flexible combination based on message subscription and publishing, which realizes the convenient mutual call between algorithms and the combination of multiple algorithms, reduces the complexity of adaptation between application components, and improves the flexibility of the application function architecture.
Thirdly, in terms of vehicle-cloud infrastructure vehicle-cloud components for "access to new ecological applications in the non-traditional automotive industry", Neusoft Reach vehicle-cloud components provide NXMQ communication, digital mirroring cloud, and autonomous driving cloud tool components. Form a component design of cloud (cloud service gateway) - pipeline (NXMQ message channel) - vehicle end (predefined messages of vehicle-side ECUs) directly to the cloud, and provide cloud Android, data-based environment, and data-based autonomous driving R&D tool platform
Based on modules such as the NeuSAR message bus, the predefined messages of the vehicle-side ECU can be directly uploaded to the cloud, and the messages of the cloud ECU can be subscribed and called, transferring the core computing power to the cloud server, satisfying grayscale switching and intelligent operation and maintenance, making full use of and giving full play to the elastic and distributed advantages of the cloud platform, releasing the computing power of local computing chips, realizing minute-level scenario iteration, and improving the flexibility and availability of resources.
Then, in terms of the application component scenario engine for "vehicle intelligent scene application innovation", the Neusoft Reach scene engine component provides a full set of tool chains for dynamic data, dynamic services, and dynamic scenes by accessing data, services, AI and other components, realizing 500+ script concurrency, and supporting grayscale release and configuration and management of services on the cloud.
By presetting the NeuSAR message bus, Python, and WebService extension modules, the scene engine component supports WebService calls in a low-quality and lightweight deployment mode to achieve flexible deployment and efficient innovation of SOA applications, shorten the cycle from design to engineering implementation, and can predict the needs of users, avoiding the embarrassment of users constantly switching apps while driving.
Finally,Neusoft Reach defines and describes the product form of the BRAIN that carries intelligent functions in the face-brain-body configuration, and also launches the product practice case of the software and hardware integrated system in line with the OpenVOC open technology architecture: X-Center 20
x-center 2.0 further covers a variety of intelligent driving functions through one chip, providing 40TOPS AI computing power, 200kDMIPS CPU computing power, 440 Gflops 3D rendering computing power, and supporting basic cockpit modules such as microphone, audio, Bluetooth, 4G network, voice and vision multi-modal interaction. Combined with the underlying hard isolation design scheme, the cockpit domain, instrument domain, and intelligent driving domain are safely isolated and operated independently.
How to attract ecological partners to join?
The ideal is very full, but how to break the existing pattern, get more partners to join, and form the Neusoft ecosystem?
In this regard, Cao Bin's statement is: solve practical problems and moisturize things silently.
Unlike some enterprises that choose to be high, we hope to work with partners to polish technology and form methods and systems in practice, so that their development efficiency, software quality, and system quality have been greatly improved. Cao Bin said that in the end, it will gradually realize the change from quantity to quality, and form a positive case to attract other partners to join.
In Cao Bin's view, there are very few car companies that can really do a good job of full-stack self-development, and the talents and open costs required by the system are very high.
Cao Bin thinksIn the future, once the ecosystem is formed, it will be more likely that everyone will accept the open platform。Computers are also, mobile phones are too, most of these software that really do intermediate platforms solve the basic level of problems, and finally there are a lot of ecological value creators in the software system, and they integrate and combine personalized applications, which is the final form of commodity attributes, I think the automobile industry will be like this.
In 2023, everyone is saying that the competition in China's auto market will be more fierce in the future, not only domestic OEMs, but also international OEMs and technology companies will also participate, which is a very prominent change this year。Cao Bin said that this is also the reason why Neusoft Reach proposed a unified ecological framework and architecture at the current point in time. "In fact, I want to tell everyone that since self-research is not feasible, we must divide labor and cooperate, so that each positioning in the framework gradually becomes clearer and clearer, so as to be more agile to deal with innovation and cost pressure. ”
In Cao Bin's view, only when China transforms its technological and innovation leadership into ecological advantages can it continue to maintain its advantages in local industrialization competition. In the future, the competition pattern will enter the stage of ecological construction and ecological competition. "We hope to be the first mover and be able to occupy a better position in the future."
Although it is hoped that the division of labor among the companies will be clear, in the early stage of ecological construction, there will inevitably be overlapping elements.
Cao Bin said that everything that does ecology must solve the problem of doing something and not doing something. "The core positioning of Neusoft Reach is an intermediate architecture, common components, and tools that can be highly reused. In this process, there will be some hardware reference designs, which are made for everyone to go into mass production because it is too early, but when it comes to the competitive level, we will keep our own boundaries. ”