The Automotive SIG provides a global forum for technical and strategic input into activities enabling or accelerating adoption of RISC-V related technology in the Automotive industry.
ADAS is Advanced Driver Assistance Systems. While aimed at assisting a human driver, ADAS systems use many of the technologies required for autonomous vehicles, so investment in these technologies represent a good step towards autonomy.
V2X is Vehicle to X communications. X may be used directly to refer to all vehicle communications, or replaced by a variety of letters to denote Vehicle, Infrastructure, Network, Pedestrian, Device or Grid (and others!)
ASIL is Automotive Safety Integrity Level, as defined in ISO 26262. 4 levels are specified, ranging from ‘ASIL-A’ applicable to the systems with the lowest degree of hazard, to ‘ASIL-D’ for systems with the highest.
SOTIF is Saftey Of The Intended Functionality, covering insufficiencies of the specification or performance of vehicle automation systems under operational conditions, rather than functional faults (defined in ISO 21448:2022)
The global automotive industry is in the midst of its greatest disruption for decades, driven by the switch away from fossil fuels and the progression towards autonomous vehicles - coupled with an increasing consumer demand for advanced functionality. This is being realised through vastly increased capability and centralisation of onboard compute, and a move from domain to zonal based architectures. These trends lead to a massive increase in the requirements for both in-vehicle and V2X communications. This disruption provides a rare opportunity for new compute architectures to achieve rapid adoption, but it is already well underway and gathering pace.
The scope of the Automotive SIG will include:
- Creating and maintaining a “gap analysis” identifying aspects currently missing in the RISC-V ecosystem to effectively address the Automotive market.
- Prioritisation of activities to address identified gaps.
- Proposing or interfacing with industry initiatives to enable and promote the adoption of RISC-V in Automotive applications.
- Application of AI to automotive applications, and ensuring SOTIF as defined in ISO 21448
- Development (through task groups) of technologies to advance the safety, security, functionality and performance of automotive systems.
- Activities to develop the ecosystem support from OS, Software and tools organisations.
It will aim to improve the ease of adoption of RISC-V based technology in:
- Safety critical systems from ASIL-A to ASIL-D
- ADAS and autonomous vehicles, covering all SAE J3016 levels 0 - 5
- Drivetrain management
- Body control
- V2x communications
- In-vehicle and supporting systems, such as charging points, road infrastructure and communication networks
It is not currently envisioned that the Automotive SIG or the task groups it oversees will propose or request changes to the RISC-V ISA.
To achieve its goals, the Automotive SIG will interact with the following groups:
- Functional Safety SIG
- Trusted Computing SIG
- SOC Infrastructure HC
- Other groups as applicable
The Automotive SIG will not deliver any specifications, standards or recommendations. It will develop overall strategy and establish priorities, then create task groups to develop any identified outputs.