In today's Software-Defined Vehicles (SDVs), application development and integration present significant challenges, making continuous and on-time software releases difficult to achieve. The additional engineering work required to manage frequent delays increases costs and directly impacts Start of Production (SOP) deadlines. These challenges arise due to several factors:
A diverse landscape of applications from different vendors with varying requirements, such as safety and performance constraints.
Powerful underlying semiconductor architectures with heterogeneous computational units consolidated in Domain Control Units (DCUs), High Performing Computers (HPCs), Central Compute Units and Zonal ECUs interconnected via high-speed communication buses.
Complex, interdependent software stacks, that must work as “one” in a safe and reliable manner.
In addition to these challenges, market demands for shorter SOP timelines, fast release cycles, and over-the-air updates further complicate integration efforts. As a result, enabling faster software releases while maintaining integrity, safety, and security is more critical than ever.
Software integrators, the unnamed heroes of SDV development
Software integrators play a crucial role in addressing these challenges. They commonly tackle use cases such as adding or removing software applications, configuring communication pathways, and modifying the persistency or diagnostics configuration of the application. Additionally, they modify the application scheduling configuration. In each release cycle, software integrators must navigate a complex configuration landscape that spans SoCs, networking layers, operating systems, basic software stacks, middleware, and service layers.
Figure 1: Integration challenges in software-defined vehicles (SDVs) arise from the numerous applications and the diversity across different software layers
Challenges faced by software integrators
The configuration process is highly complex due to the numerous components across different software layers. Integrators must work with multiple tools, bridging knowledge gaps that increase cognitive load and prolong release cycles.
A vast configuration space must be managed across multiple software stacks and modules, even when the required modifications are relatively small (e.g., adding a new application or adjusting communication pathways).
As software complexity grows, market demands push for shorter SOP timelines, leaving integrators with tighter deadlines.
The software integrator receives input configurations for various components from different vendors, each in a different, non-standardized format. This requires translating these formats into one accepted by the configuration tools, increasing the complexity and duration of the release process.
Due to the lengthy integration process (resulting from the points above), providers of different software components cannot afford to make minor changes and receive quick feedback from the integration cycle. Consequently, they are forced to implement significant changes, leading to a 'big bang' integration, which takes longer to validate and deploy.
MotionWise Creator addresses these challenges by streamlining and automating the integration process for MotionWise-based systems. This enables software integrators to receive fast feedback and accelerate release cycles. Before diving into how MotionWise Creator addresses these challenges, let us explore what MotionWise Creator is, its architecture, and its user flow.
What is MotionWise Creator?
MotionWise Creator is a software application that enables its users to build software releases fast, correctly, and fully automated based on the MotionWise platform. It eliminates the need for repetitive manual modifications across numerous configuration files.
MotionWise Creator is a headless application that can be connected to any CI/CD pipeline(s) via its command-line interface. Additionally, it offers a graphical user interface (GUI) for user-friendly configuration tasks, such as scheduling applications and creating computation chains. It can also integrate with an IDE, allowing for seamless development and debugging in a familiar environment.
Figure 2. MotionWise Creator high-level architecture
MotionWise Creator User Flow
System Definition: The user defines and configures the system based on MotionWise system definition guidelines, which capture all the requirements for a correctly configured system. Also, a CI/CD pipeline can be used to trigger the MotionWise Creator backend via the MotionWise Creator frontend CLI.
Input validation: MotionWise Creator automatically validates the user's System model and platform configuration files against the MotionWise requirements outlined in the System Definition Guide. This step provides early and comprehensive feedback, highlighting deviations from modeling guidelines and flagging errors.
Generation of configured platform: MotionWise Creator manages and generates all necessary system configurations, including:
Task Scheduler configuration for various operating systems (QNX, Linux, Classic AUTOSAR- based OSs (OSEK) and other POSIX OSs). Read more about it here.
Network Schedule for Time Sensitive Networking (TSN) devices, enabling reliable communication between endpoints (SoCs). Read more about it here.
Configuration for several MotionWise services (e.g. inter-SoC communication and task monitoring).
AUTOSAR Basic software stack configuration
3rd party stack configuration: MotionWise Creator allows users to add configuration steps for third-party stacks that are not part of the MotionWise system and provides support to automate those steps.
Build & Deployment: The generated system configuration files can be compiled in the MotionWise Creator backend or locally on the integrator’s machine. The resulting embedded configurations are used to create flashable binaries that are ready for test and deployment on the target system.
Figure 3. MotionWise Creator User Flow
How MotionWise Creator eases software integration challenges
It simplifies the integration process by abstracting the configuration of different components. This is handled in the MotionWise Creator backend, reducing the need for the integrators to interact with multiple tools.
It automates third-party module configuration, minimizing errors and reducing integration time. It also eliminates the need for in-depth knowledge of these proprietary tools.
It reduces configuration complexity by exposing only essential parameters to the software integrator, lowering cognitive load.
It offers incremental integration cycles, enabling application developers to make minor changes quickly by providing the following:
Early validation of input configurations, simplifying debugging and reducing integration lead time.
An artifact-based build system in the MotionWise Creator backend that accelerates integration turnaround time through caching and parallelization.
Motionwise Creator is flexible enabling integrators to introduce, modify, repeat or reorder integration steps as needed. For instance, a custom communication gateway SWC requires a configuration step for setting up the communication path, including the sender, receiver, and communication properties.
It leverages a cloud-based infrastructure, providing seamless updates and immediate access to new features without delays.
Watch here a demonstration of how customers can effectively schedule their software applications using MotionWise Schedule Tooling.
Conclusion
MotionWise Creator is a powerful tool that simplifies software integration for SDVs by automating configuration processes, reducing cognitive load on integrators, and enabling faster incremental release cycles. By providing early validation, efficient automation, and a streamlined workflow, it minimizes errors and accelerates development. Its flexibility and cloud-based infrastructure ensure that integrators can adapt to evolving use cases and market demands, making MotionWise Creator an essential solution for modern software-defined vehicles.
