Automotive embedded software architecture in the multi-core age

Multi-core is a game changer for automotive industry, providing unprecedented computing capabilities, and allowing consolidating heterogeneous applications into a single device with benefits in terms of cost and reuse. Multi-core asks for virtualization of applications, moving from the hardware-centric perspective to the function-centric perspective: applications on a single electronic control unit (ECU) are transformed into hardware-agnostic functionalities that hosted by multicore ECUs alongside other, unrelated, applications. Moreover, to exploit multi-cores to the full extent in some automotive applications, the guarantee is needed that different applications exposing different criticalities (e.g., ISO26262 ASIL D and ISO26262 ASIL B) can coexist. The paper presents the technologies available to support these concepts such as AUTOSAR and embedded virtualizations, presenting the main issues that have to be solved and discussing the state of the art.