Qualcomm Joins Eclipse Foundation And SOAFEE To Accelerate Future Of Software-Defined Vehicle Technologies
By Godson Umejiego, Bureau Chief, The Americas
Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. has just announced it has joined two Software Defined Vehicle (SDV) focused consortiums – the Eclipse Foundation’s Software Defined Vehicle Working Group and the Scalable Open Architecture for Embedded Edge (SOAFEE) Special Interest Group – supporting the company’s commitment to creating open standards and open-source, interoperable software building blocks that form the foundation of building an SDV platform for global automakers and Tier-1 suppliers.
As one of the largest global communities of individuals and organizations with a mature, scalable, and business-friendly environment for open-source software collaboration and innovation, the Eclipse SDV Working Group – which is under Eclipse Foundation – focuses on providing a forum for the automotive ecosystem to collaborate and enable open source and open standards-based technologies to accelerate the vision of SDV.
The SOAFEE initiative is an industry-led Special Interest Group (SIG) comprised of global automakers, semiconductor suppliers, open-source and independent software vendors, and cloud technology leaders aimed at delivering a cloud-native architecture enhanced for mixed-criticality automotive applications with corresponding open-source reference implementations to enable commercial and non-commercial offerings. SOAFEE was founded by Arm, AWS, Bosch, Cariad, Continental Red Hat, Suse and Woven Planet. The SOAFEE SIG aims to lead and define the cloud-native development paradigm required for a new era of efficient edge workloads.
As the automotive industry rapidly pivots to a cloud-native software development model, software is becoming the key mechanism for differentiating vehicle functionality and passenger experiences. With the company’s commitment to a “Developer First” strategy, Qualcomm Technologies hopes to work with both consortiums to help empower the automotive ecosystem in creating cutting-edge, intelligent cockpit, advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), and connected services capabilities utilizing our scalable, open, and flexible Snapdragon® Digital Chassis™ platforms. Working with Eclipse SDV Working Group and SOAFEE SIG, Qualcomm Technologies aims to increase access to industry-standard interoperable software stacks and empower a large community of software developers to innovate vehicle features and functionality.
“We’re pleased that Qualcomm Technologies is committing to advance industry collaboration within Eclipse Software Defined Vehicle and the SOAFEE SIG,” said executive director of the Eclipse Foundation Mike Milinkovich. “They join a group of diverse organizations from the global automotive ecosystem leading innovation on scalable and industry-ready open-source platforms for software defined vehicles. Within Eclipse SDV, our code-first approach to building automotive-grade in-car software stacks using open source and open standards will benefit greatly from Qualcomm Technologies’ expertise and contributions.”
“The era of software-defined vehicles brings massive opportunity to the automotive industry but also a new level of complexity to developers,” said SOAFEE SIG Governing Body representative and director of automotive partnerships, Automotive Line of Business, Arm Robert Day. “It takes strong industry collaboration to realize the full potential of software-defined vehicles, and we’re pleased to have Qualcomm Technologies contribute its expertise to the SOAFEE SIG as we rethink and modernize the industry’s approach to software development.”
Qualcomm Technologies currently works with industry stakeholders across the globe to not only streamline and accelerate software development, and deployment, across vehicle platforms, but to also empower the ecosystem with new opportunities to create monetizable applications and services. By working closely with both consortiums, Qualcomm Technologies will also be able to support SDV infrastructure to help provide best-in-class developer experiences and efficiencies by utilizing driving platform features and connected services designed to help improve the user experience and allow consumers to continuously derive additional value from their vehicles. Supporting open software development also allows Qualcomm Technologies to get to market faster with mature, standardized, and resilient software capabilities that can be continually refreshed, enabling automakers to sustain long-term customer relationships that can generate new revenue streams throughout the vehicle’s lifecycle.
“We look forward to being a part of the Eclipse SDV Working Group and SOAFEE SIG groups as they will provide Qualcomm Technologies new opportunities to work alongside other automotive thought leaders across the globe to develop the interoperable, modular, open standards-based software stacks, middleware and cloud components that are necessary for the entire automotive ecosystem to take advantage of emerging software defined vehicles,” said VP of Product Management, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc Bill Pinnell.
