AVnu readies automotive Ethernet profile in battle for the car bus
The AVnu Alliance promotes the AVB (audio visual bridging) version of IEEE 802.1 Ethernet and members are voting on an automotive profile that is expected at the beginning of July. This will compete with automotive Ethernet developments by the GENIVI alliance and the OPEN alliance, and with the MOST150 bus that has added in the ability to carry Ethernet packets as a result of the interest in using Ethernet to carry data.
Once an automotive standard for deterministic Ethernet is adopted this will be used as the base for an industrial standard.
French equipment maker Parrot has also joined the AVB group. “Parrot offers carmakers a range of infotainment solutions using Ethernet: head units, rear-seat entertainment systems, digital TV and radio reception units, media centers, etc," said Eric Riyahi, Executive Vice-President of Parrot. "We count on AVB for improved performance, with the growing number of high speed network-enabled devices in the vehicle and future scalability.”
It has been working on Ethernet in vehicles for the past three years and earlier this year unveiled the SOCA concept of an Ethernet-based infotainment architecture, as well as an AVB-enabled reverse camera system.
Like Parrot, many interested companies are members of several groups. “AVnu Alliance’s liaison relationship with GENIVI enables coordination of work between the AVnu Alliance and GENIVI, specifically to share relevant procedures and practices such as AVnu’s API and requirements documents to ensure alignment and eliminate replicated work between the two,” said Yong Kim, chair of the AVnu Alliance Automotive Segment and Senior Director, CTO Office for Broadcom. “As the two progress toward testing requirements, they will continue to coordinate.” Broadcom has also been a key member of the OPEN Alliance.
BMW similarly is a new member of AVnu and is also part of GENIVI. The 65 AVnu Alliance members now represent all facets of automotive technology such as OEMs, silicon manufacturers, Tier 1 technology suppliers and middleware providers.
"Introducing Ethernet-based communication is a key to a reliable and powerful in-car networking, on which innovations can be built," said Alexander Maier, Director of E/E Architectures and Semiconductor Standards at the BMW Group. "BMW is excited about the opportunities the membership in the AVnu Alliance brings in respect to standardized quality-of-service Ethernet, which will allow us to further enhance the safety and infotainment functionalities in our vehicles."
Applications such as Advanced Drivers Assistance, electric vehicles, high-definition multi-zone A/V and autonomous driving are driving bus performance and AVnu is promoting AVB certification to give automotive manufacturers confidence that all parts of the complex automotive network will work seamlessly together.
"Ethernet and AVB are the natural step for infotainment in the connected automobile to allow for multiple in-vehicle systems to simultaneously access information over a single and high-data-rate network," says Luca DeAmbroggi, Principal Analyst for Automotive Semiconductors at IHS Research. "In particular, BMW has already demonstrated its strong focus on the deployment of Ethernet technology in the car. With the addition of BMW as a member, the Avnu Alliance is further broadening the number of key players supporting the usage of AVB within the vehicle."
Last month a GENIVI version of AVB from Italian developer Pelagicore was ported to the R-Car series of automotive infotainment Systems-on-Chip (SoC) from Renesas. This is directly related to the AVB project started by Pelagicore in the GENIVI consortium in order to produce an automotive Ethernet AVB Reference Software Stack to be made available to all GENIVI members as open source. The Renesas R-Car H2 SoC platform has been chosen because of its AVB support in the MAC, which provides the necessary level of performance and precision for in-vehicle audio and video applications. Pelagicore and Renesas consider this proof of concept as the first step of their cooperation and plan to work together to bring more innovation in the future for in-vehicle infotainment networks.
AVnu member XMOS Semiconductor also has a well established open source AVB stack running on its automotive qualified deterministic microcontrollers to act as the nodes for an AVB network.
Related stories:
Renesas prepares Ethernet AVB infotainment platform
Ethernet AVB comes in complete package
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