Cadence to provide Arm Zena CSS chip consulting services for the auto sector
Cadence Design Systems’ services arm will help automakers design vehicle chips based on the Arm Zena CSS technology bundle.
According to the company, the technical assistance will be provided as part of a new offering that also includes semiconductor blueprints and software.
Cadence develops applications that engineers use to develop integrated circuits. It also provides certain other offerings, including ready-made chip designs that remove the need for customers to create everything on their own. Arm, the other company involved in the announcement, is a British supplier of ready-to-use chip designs. Its technology can be found in a variety of devices ranging from smartphones to cars.
Cadence’s new consulting-and-technology offering is the fruit of a partnership with Arm that began more than a decade ago. According to the company, the offering is designed to help vehicle manufacturers develop automated driver-assisted systems. Those are the modules that smart cars use for tasks such as automated parking and lane centering.
Smarter cars
A modern vehicle’s main computer includes not only a CPU but also other, more specialized chips. One chip might run AI models that power the automated parking feature. Another may power the infotainment system. Additional chips monitor the vehicle’s core components for malfunctions, fend off cyberattacks and manage software updates.
A car’s chips don’t operate in isolation from one another but rather actively exchange data. To facilitate the movement of data between chips, engineers must integrate them. That integration process usually requires a significant amount of time and effort. The more chips a car includes, the more complicated the task becomes.
Last week, Arm introduced an offering called Zena CSS that is designed to speed up the chip integration workflow. It combines multiple vehicle chip designs into a pre-integrated bundle that removes the need for clients to link together the different components on their own. Arm says that Zena CSS can speed up the process of developing a vehicle’s computer by up to 12 months.
Zena CSS combines a 16-core CPU with a chip known as a Safety Island that helps detect vehicle malfunctions. Another module, the Runtime Security Engine, protects the car’s firmware from tempering and helps secure over-the-air-updates. Zena CSS also includes other components, including an interconnect that links together the chips to let them exchange data.
External chip expertise
Although Zena CSS streamlines quite a few development tasks, designing a vehicle computer is still a heavy lift. That’s where Cadence’s new offering comes into the picture. According to the company, it’s designed to reduce the amount of time and effort involved in building vehicle processors based on Zena CSS.
The offering has several components. The first is a collection of professional services that will allow auto makers to offload key parts of the chip development process to Cadence.
“Cadence offers our customers service work packages that span silicon, system, chiplets and embedded software design, verification, and production support,” Steve Brown, Cadence’s director of strategic marketing, told Boardroom Insight. “Cadence services expertise in ISO26262 and IEC 61508 provides ARM Zena CSS customers the confidence to meet rigorous automotive safety standards.”
ISO26262 and IEC 61508 are technical standards designed to help engineers ensure that the electronic systems they develop will work reliably in the field. The former standard focuses on the auto sector, while the latter also has applications in other industries. Both contain best practices that engineers can use to find issues in electronics during the development process and fix those issues.
In addition to shortening system development times, Cadence is promising to help customers of its new offering lower the associated costs. “A customer’s total cost of silicon ownership can be optimized by engaging with Cadence service teams at any stage of the design, verification, implementation and production process, leveraging unique expertise from a multi-year partnership with Arm to integrate its products and solutions,” Brown explained. “ARM Zena CSS customers can choose to engage Cadence services for specific steps in the design flow or engage in a turnkey model for developing and validating their automotive semiconductors, chiplets, and systems designs.”
Alongside professional services, Cadence’s Zena CSS has several other components. There are ready-made semiconductor designs that remove the need for automakers to create every part of a processor from scratch. Cadence is offering blueprints for chiplet interconnects, memory interfaces and various other components. Additionally, customers can use the company’s Helium Virtual and Hybrid Studio platform to build software for their car computers.
The most obvious way to go about developing vehicle software is to build the hardware first and then implement applications atop of it. However, that means software development can only begin once the hardware is ready, which may take years. Cadence’s Helium Virtual and Hybrid Studio provides a shortcut. It allows automakers to create a digital twin of a Zena CSS computer and use it to develop auto software before the computer enters production. Such digital twins are particularly useful for the testing phase of application projects.
Cadence, Brown added, has “created a centralized software development environment that coupled with our Helium virtual platform technology provides a smoother path to system level software integration for automotive suppliers building applications using the ARM Zena CSS”. The environment lends itself to tasks such as exploring different ways of linking together the electronic components in a car.
Photo courtesy of Cadence