Basemark, a Finnish automotive software specialist and developer of the Rocksolid Core automotive OS, has joined AUTOSAR (AUTomotive Open System ARchitecture) – a worldwide development partnership of vehicle manufacturers, suppliers, service providers and companies from the automotive electronics, semiconductor and software industries – as a development partner. Other partners include BMW Group, Daimler, Ford, General Motors, PSA, Toyota and Volkswagen.
“We are thrilled to partner with AUTOSAR,” remarked Basemark’s founder and CEO, Tero Sarkkinen. “We share the same vision of automotive standards that benefit the whole automotive value chain, from the car manufacturer to the consumer. This partnership further advances Rocksolid Core as the base platform of choice for car manufacturers for creating car applications. We are enabling a future for the automotive industry where creating new car platforms will be quicker than ever while bringing down the unit cost considerably.”
Rocksolid Core is based on the AUTOSAR Adaptive Platform and the AUTOSAR Classic Platform. On top of these are the Rocksolid Core middleware and reference applications, ranging from powertrain, steering, autonomous drive and ADAS (advanced driver assistance systems) applications to body and cockpit electronics such as digital instrument clusters and head-up displays, creating a full, end-to-end solution for software-defined cars and automotive applications.
Basemark notes that common standards and end-to-end solutions are increasingly important for software-defined cars. The number of software-defined vehicles is expected to grow exponentially during this decade, and forecasts predict that 850 million connected vehicles will be on the roads by 2030. Software and hardware complexity has dramatically increased, and cars can include more than 85 different processors and software modules from over 50 different suppliers. Understandably, car manufacturers are looking for ways to minimize this complexity by reducing the number of needed processors and software.
“Creating new car systems faster and more cost-effectively is the main question for all car manufacturers. Rocksolid Core architecture requires fewer processors compared with conventional models, resulting in savings in both electronics and software. For example, with Rocksolid Core, ADAS functions, the digital instrument cluster and head-up display can be run with just one processor. We estimate that through Rocksolid Core, our customers can take more than a year off the development of a new car platform and save hundreds of euros per car in series production costs,” Sarkkinen concluded.
