Continental implements cross-domain high-performance computer in a car

Continental announced today that it has implemented a cross-domain High-Performance Computer (HPC) in a car. For the first time, hosting cockpit and additional vehicle functions like driving safety and automated parking, including holistic motion control in a real-life vehicle application was made possible.

Serving as a showcase for what the development of software-defined vehicles (SDVs) can look like for automotive engineers, the SDV technology car utilizes Continental’s cloud-based Continental Automotive Edge Framework (CAEdge), which connects the vehicle to the cloud and features a virtual workbench to simplify and accelerate development, supply, and maintenance of software-intensive system functions. The implementation was leveraged by the Snapdragon Ride™ Flex System-on-Chip (SoC) with pre-integrated Snapdragon Ride Vision perception stack from Qualcomm Technologies, Inc.

“With the SDV technology car, we are able to demonstrate Continental’s ecosystem: from road to cloud, from virtual to real,” said Gilles Mabire, CTO at Continental Automotive. “As the first development partners for vehicle manufacturers in the world, we are proud of how we have moved beyond concepts and can showcase the capabilities and challenges of the convergence of automotive domains in a tangible software-defined vehicle.”

“The goal is not only to show how well functions work, but to validate how well multiple technologies can be integrated and work alongside each other in HPC-based vehicle architectures within a software-defined vehicle,” explained Jean-François Tarabbia, Head of Business Area Architecture and Networking at Continental Automotive. “This is a crucial step to convince the market that the goal to combine several control units in one HPC is not just feasible but can also render the cost benefits we want to achieve.”

“The concept of the software-defined vehicle relies heavily on high-performance hardware that can handle the amount of data,” said Tarabbia. “With Qualcomm Technologies, we have the strong technical collaborator by our side, who shares our ambitious approach to bring the software-defined vehicle onto the road.”