The Road towards Predictable Automotive High-Performance Platforms

Due to the trends of centralizing the E/E architecture and new computing-intensive applications, high-performance hardware platforms are currently finding their way into automotive systems. However, the Systems-on-Chip (SoCs) currently available on the market have significant weaknesses when it comes to providing predictable performance for time-critical applications. The main reason for this is that these platforms are optimized for average-case performance. This shortcoming represents one major risk in the development of current and future automotive systems. In this paper we describe how high-performance and predictability could (and should) be reconciled in future HW/SW platforms. We believe that this goal can only be reached via a close collaboration among system suppliers, IP providers, semiconductor companies, and OS/hypervisor vendors. Furthermore, academic input will be needed to solve remaining challenges and to further improve initial solutions.