Truck & Off-Highway Engineering - October 2024 - 2

EDITORIAL
EDITORIAL
Making machines software-defined no simple task
" Today we see a transformation to
Software-defined machines (SDMs) were
a top-of-mind topic at the recent 2024
SAE COMVEC event, with experts expounding
on where the industry stands
and where it can go. In brief, while the
long-term outlook is bright, the road
ahead is anything but smooth.
" Software-defined probably has more
value with the commercial-vehicle sector
than it does in the passenger-vehicle
sector, because we can actually increase
the economics of the vehicles.
We are all there to get a job done, " said
Dr. Moritz Neukirchner, senior director
of strategic product management for
SDVs at Elektrobit.
Software-defined does not mean
simply adding connectivity or over-theair
update capabilities to a vehicle,
Neukirchner noted. Rather, it means
" that you can change the nature or the
function of the device by changing the
software. When you look at your phone,
you don't even care too much about the
hardware, you care about the access to
the ecosystem of that phone. "
Peter Rödin, VP of embedded systems
at Navistar, emphasized the need
for companies to adapt to capitalize on
software's promise. " Since most of the
customer value in the future will be
based on what we do with software, we
need to change the way that we operate
and the way that we develop, " he
said. " We need to stop thinking about
just evolving our traditional product
lines and adding all-new features. We
need to completely revise the way we
think about this. If we don't have this
mindset shift, we will not be able to
take the steps that are needed. "
This necessary " paradigm shift, " an
oft-referenced term at SAE COMVEC, is
not an easy undertaking, nor is development
of the underlying E/E architecture
required to enable SDMs. Martin
Schleicher, head of software strategy at
Continental, discussed the move away
from a distributed E/E architecture with
many ECUs toward a more flexible, centralized
one.
2 October 2024
server-zone architectures with an HPC
[high-performance computer] able to
run complex software functions and
add new features faster and more simply, "
he said. " In the future, maybe in 10
years, we expect a central-server architecture
with one to three central HPCs
which are not dependent on a certain
function driving the architecture ... Here
it is possible to decouple hardware and
software relatively easily. "
Nico Hartmann, CTO of Qorix GmbH,
offered a sobering perspective on the
state of software-defined, which he said
is currently in the third iteration of development.
" The complexity has been
underestimated every time, by everyone.
I think we still underestimate the
complexity of it. "
One of several technical challenges
Hartmann detailed is runtime. " We have
in classic applications five, maybe 10
applications that are brought down to a
single ECU, but in the software-defined
vehicle it's 100 to 200, " he said. " What
we see is if we integrate those, there is
basically no rules how these applications
consume resources from our powerful
central device. The result is pretty much
chaos, and we see very unstable execution
scenarios. That is a challenge we
have to solve - how to find an orchestration
system that everything goes
neatly in the traffic on the CPU. "
Qorix, a joint venture of KPIT
Technologies and ZF Friedrichshafen, is
developing open and scalable middleware
stacks that it claims can help the transition
to a central-compute architecture.
Hartmann added: " No one at the current
point in time has an easy life in getting
this type of architecture working in
the field, and we are not talking about
maintaining them over 15 years - we're
talking about getting them to work at all. "
The CV sector appears set on a software-defined
future, but what experts at
SAE COMVEC made clear is it'll be no
simple task to achieve.
Ryan Gehm, Editor-in-Chief
TRUCK & OFF-HIGHWAY ENGINEERING
Ryan Gehm
Editor-in-Chief
Ryan.Gehm@sae.org
Sebastian Blanco
Senior Editor
sebastian.blanco@saemediagroup.com
Chris Clonts
Senior Editor
chris.clonts@saemediagroup.com
Matthew Wolfe
Assistant Editor
matthew.wolfe@saemediagroup.com
Amanda Hosey
Editor, Custom Content
amanda.hosey@saemediagroup.com
Contributors
John Kendall
Europe Editor
Steven Ashley, Kami Buchholz,
Dan Gilkes, Paul Weissler
DESIGN
Lois Erlacher
Creative Director
Ray Carlson
Associate Art Director
SALES &
MARKETING
Joe Pramberger
Publisher
joe.pramberger@saemediagroup.com
Kaitlyn Sommer
Marketing Director
kaitlyn.sommer@saemediagroup.com
Martha Tress
Recruitment Sales Manager
+1.724.772.7155
Martha.Tress@sae.org
REGIONAL SALES
North America
New England/Eastern Canada:
ME, VT, NH, MA, RI, QC
Brian Hines
+1.647.296.5014
brian.hines@saemediagroup.com
CT:
Stan Greenfield
+1.203.938.2418
greenco@optonline.net
Mid-Atlantic/Southeast/TX:
TX, OK, LA, AR, MS, AL, TN, FL, SC,
NC, GA, DC, WV, VA
Ray Tompkins
+1.281.313.1004
ray.tompkins@saemediagroup.com
NY, NJ, OH:
Ryan Beckman
+1.973.409.4687
ryan.beckman@saemediagroup.com
PA/DE:
John Murray
+1.973.409.4685
john.murray@saemediagroup.com
SUBSCRIPTIONS
+1.866.354.1125
TOH@OMEDA.COM
Midwest/Great Lakes:
IN, MI, WI, IA, IL, MN
Chris Kennedy
+1.847.498.4520, x3008
chris@didierandbroderick.com
Midwest/Central Canada:
KS, KY, MO, NE, ND, SD, ON, MB
Bob Casey
+1.847.223.5225
bobc@caseyreps.com
CA, WA, OR, AZ, NM,
Rocky Mountain States:
Tim Powers
+1.908.892.2838
timothy.powers@saemediagroup.com
International
Europe:
Sven Anacker
+49.202.373294.11
sa@intermediapro.de
Sabine Schoett
+49.202.373294.13
ss@intermediapro.de
China:
Will Chang
+86.21.6140.8919
Will.Chang@sae.org
Japan:
Shigenori Nagatomo
+81.3.3661.6138
Nagatomo-pbi@gol.com
South Korea:
Eun-Tae Kim
+82-2-564-3971/2
ksae1@ksae.org
Integrated Media
Consultants
Patrick Harvey
+1.973.409.4686
patrick.harvey@saemediagroup.com
Todd Holtz
+1.973.545.2566
todd.holtz@saemediagroup.com
Rick Rosenberg
+1.973.545.2565
rick.rosenberg@saemediagroup.com
Jason Setti
+1.973.874.0271
jason.setti@saemediagroup.com
Truck & Off-Highway Engineering - October 2024

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Truck & Off-Highway Engineering - October 2024
