As mobility becomes more connected, our vehicles have become more complicated. In the past few years, the number of electronic control units (ECUs) installed in automobiles has expanded in order to create the connected experiences consumers are expecting more and more every day. But this expansion is creating complexity — making it difficult to connect systems and deliver a seamless digital experience for consumers while keeping vehicles secure and safe. HARMAN’s Device Virtualization for Connected Vehicles solves this challenge by co-locating various environments on the same hardware to reduce costs and improve performance while guaranteeing security and safety.
Today, creating a more connected and seamless vehicle experience becomes even more tangible — as HARMAN has announced Device Virtualization will be a standard solution on most HARMAN automotive systems — in addition to being the solution of choice for the Samsung Exynos auto chipset and major global automotive OEMs. With increasing levels of adoption, by the end of 2021, HARMAN’s Device Virtualization solution will be deployed in countless vehicles around the world. And HARMAN isn’t stopping there; Device Virtualization is both hardware-agnostic and OS-agnostic, so it supports many silicon vendors and embedded runtime environments (including AGL, Android and leading real-time Oses to name a few) on the market today, providing leading car manufacturers with increased freedom of choice agnostic of the OS required.
Looking to the future, scaling Device Virtualization means accelerating the next evolution of mobility. With the ability to streamline connected technologies, the opportunities to create brilliant, future-forward experiences in the vehicle are nearly limitless. The solution allows for multiple advanced car functionalities and hardware peripherals (that were managed in silo as part of separate ECUs) to be consolidated into one domain controller while increasing efficiency, improving security, heightening the driving experience; and reducing weight, component cost, and maintenance costs. Here are a few exciting use cases made possible by HARMAN’s Device Virtualization solution:
- Multi-Display Digital Cockpit
In a vehicle with multiple displays throughout the cockpit, Device Virtualization can enable discrete information to be displayed on separate screens located in several different parts of the vehicle. The benefit for drivers and passengers is significant — multiple screens can deliver an engaging, high-touch experience with information and entertainment available at anyone’s fingertips. A mapping service may be displayed on a head-up display, while listening choices and associated metadata can be displayed on the center console — all while multimedia content is streamed in the backseat for passengers to enjoy.
However, creating an environment where multiple screens can co-exist in a way that offers a seamless, energy efficient and effective experience can only exist in an environment supported by Device Virtualization. With Device Virtualization’s ability to consolidate all this functionality into one piece of hardware, cost, energy consumption and complexity are all reduced — while the connectivity experience is faster and more engaging for consumers. Device Virtualization will enable the future of multi-modal digital cockpits, and ensure vehicles become information, entertainment and connectivity hubs.
- Semi- and Fully-Autonomous Driving
With ADAS features growing in complexity and fully-autonomous vehicles on the horizon, vehicles will require the bandwidth to run multiple programs simultaneously — while also ensuring those applications can be connected and integrated. To ensure certain programs can run smoothly, vehicles will require more computing power that doesn’t increase weight or obstruct design.
To enable ADAS applications available today, Device Virtualization’s ASIL-B Hypervisor is able to operate across multiple chipsets and processors, allowing safe and seamless integration of advanced application within vehicles electrical architecture. For applications involving cameras, it allows the efficient transfer of image data from the many external and internal cameras to the associated processing unit, and then from the processing unit to each display within the vehicle. This application, in partnership with Samsung’s Exynos auto chipset, is leading the market in the automotive industry.
- Electric Vehicles
With a predicted 40% of vehicles on the road being electric by 2030, it’s vital that automakers and suppliers begin examining the ways to save processing power and increase energy efficiency. HARMAN’s Device Virtualization does just that, through its consolidation of functionalities running upon one chipset. This practice reduces weight, thereby decreasing power consumption, vital for EVs of today and tomorrow.
With Device Virtualization, electric vehicles won’t have to compromise on experience and performance, giving manufacturers computational flexibility to connect multiple devices and applications while still saving computational power — enabling electric vehicles to maximize energy while still meeting consumer expectations for performance and connected experiences.
The HARMAN Device Virtualization Automotive-grade technology enables multiple operating systems to run on a single hardware platform, securely and with full isolation, and is already equipping the future of connected, autonomous and energy-efficient vehicles. With years of automotive and technology expertise, combined with active Device Virtualization deployments with leading global OEMs — HARMAN is revolutionizing the next generation of in-vehicle experience.