Open Ecosystems and Standardization Enable Shift-Left Acceleration for the Software-Defined Vehicle
The automotive industry is undergoing a profound transformation, driven by the evolution of software-defined vehicle (SDV) platforms and increasingly capable artificial intelligence (AI). In this paradigm, the vehicle’s value is increasingly defined by its software capabilities rather than just its mechanical design. This evolution is fueled by rapid advancements in computational technologies, connectivity, and the growing demand for intelligent vehicles that can adapt and improve over time.
In this context, Arm has launched the Arm® Zena™ Compute Subsystems (CSS), a pre-integrated and validated compute platform optimized for performance, power and area, and designed to accelerate development for the AI-defined vehicle. Zena CSS is critical to enabling the power-efficient compute required for AI-driven experiences. Zena CSS incorporates the SOAFEE (Scalable Open Architecture for Embedded Edge) blueprint, which provides a layered, standardized software structure designed specifically for automotive needs. Additionally, the integration of Ethernet Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN) offers the robust, deterministic networking required to support modern vehicle architectures.
For information on the Arm Zena CSS platform, see: link This posting highlights Excelfore’s pivotal role in supporting Zena CSS, Arm’s first-generation CSS for automotive. It explores how Excelfore contributions, particularly in OTA (Over-The-Air) technologies and the "shift-left" methodology, are accelerating the development and adoption of scalable, secure, and standardized SDV solutions.
Strategic Collaboration extending support for Arm Zena CSS Excelfore support for the Arm Zena CSS
The automotive industry is undergoing a profound transformation, driven by the evolution of software-defined vehicle (SDV) platforms and increasingly capable artificial intelligence (AI). In this paradigm, the vehicle’s value is increasingly defined by its software capabilities rather than just its mechanical design. This evolution is fueled by rapid advancements in computational technologies, connectivity, and the growing demand for intelligent vehicles that can adapt and improve over time.
In this context, Arm has launched the Arm® Zena™ Compute Subsystems (CSS), a pre-integrated and validated compute platform optimized for performance, power and area, and designed to accelerate development for the AI-defined vehicle. Zena CSS is critical to enabling the power-efficient compute required for AI-driven experiences. Zena CSS incorporates the SOAFEE (Scalable Open Architecture for Embedded Edge) blueprint, which provides a layered, standardized software structure designed specifically for automotive needs. Additionally, the integration of Ethernet Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN) offers the robust, deterministic networking required to support modern vehicle architectures.
For information on the Arm Zena CSS platform, see: link This posting highlights Excelfore’s pivotal role in supporting Zena CSS, Arm’s first-generation CSS for automotive. It explores how Excelfore contributions, particularly in OTA (Over-The-Air) technologies and the "shift-left" methodology, are accelerating the development and adoption of scalable, secure, and standardized SDV solutions.
Strategic Collaboration extending support for Arm Zena CSS Excelfore support for the Arm Zena CSS
Excelfore support for the Arm Zena CSS launch reflects a broader ecosystem of collaboration aimed at accelerating SDV development.
- Timeline and Commitment: Excelfore will deliver a working proof-of-concept on the Zena virtual platform, showcasing integrated OTA within the SOAFEE environment.
- Red Hat Collaboration: Excelfore and Red Hat collaborate to integrating AutoSD operating system components, the upstream preview of the commercial Red Hat In-Vehicle Operating System, providing robust support for containerized vehicle
applications, and giving developers a path to a commercially-backed and functional safety-certified Linux platform for deployment. - AWS Collaboration: The use of Arm-based AWS Graviton servers—with instruction-set parity to Arm automotive platforms—enables scalable virtual platforms for testing and deployment.
- Siemens Software Collaboration: By integrating into simulation tools from Siemens Software on AWS Graviton servers, Excelfore supports a continuous validation loop, allowing comprehensive testing of update scenarios, software rollouts, and system behaviors in a virtual environment.
- The Autoware Foundation: As a key part of the SOAFEE community, the Autoware Foundation provides the OpenAD Kit SOAFEE Blueprint, offering an open-source Autonomous Driving solution that runs on the Zena CSS virtual platform. eSync is
integrated into the OpenAD Kit SOAFEE Blueprint for continuous deployment of updated software to virtual and actual platforms.
These strategic collaborations amplify the utility of the Zena CSS platform, making it ready for real-world deployment in SDV production pipelines.
The Central Role of OTA (Over-The-Air) Updates in SDV Development
OTA updates are foundational to the SDV concept. They allow automakers to deliver software enhancements, security patches, and new features without physical recalls or dealership visits. In this way, vehicles remain current, secure, and functionally rich over their lifespans.
Beyond convenience, OTA drives several key advantages:
- Continuous innovation, enabling feature expansion post-sale
- Cost reduction by eliminating service overhead
- Enhanced security, through timely vulnerability patches
However, the legacy of complexity in automotive electronics—featuring diverse ECUs, operating systems, and network topologies—makes the implementation of full-vehicle OTA particularly challenging. Reliable delivery, verification, dependency relationships, rollback mechanisms, and compatibility assurance across a heterogeneous vehicle environment demand robust, standardized frameworks.
While the trend to centralizing key functions into high-performance compute platforms such as Zena CSS can reduce the diversity of electronics in SDVs, there is often some portion of legacy remaining, and some mixing of vendors, ECUs, operating systems and networks. eSync is a proven OTA platform in complex environments and serves effectively for cloud connectivity not only for the newest in-vehicle architectures, but also in mixed solutions with some retained legacy.
Additionally, utilizing containerization can add considerable value to the reliability and flexibility of OTA updates. Containers encapsulate all the dependencies of the application and can lead to finer-grained software updates that scale across different run-time environments across incremental versions of a given vehicle platform. Containers also are far more efficient on resource utilization, which is always of great benefit in memory and power constrained systems. The eSync Alliance has performed pioneering work on OTA of containerized software in automotive use-cases.
For more information on eSync OTA of containerized software, see: link
Excelfore Leadership in OTA Standardization
Excelfore has been a leader in addressing these challenges through its support of the eSync Alliance, a non-profit trade association which develops and publishes the specifications for the eSync OTA data pipeline. eSync provides a secure, bi-directional pipeline to update software and configurations, and collect data from in-vehicle devices, supporting full-vehicle OTA operations.
Through its active participation in major industry consortia—including the eSync Alliance, AVNU Alliance, AUTOSAR, AWF, ASAM, COVESA, and SOAFEE—Excelfore has played a significant role in shaping and implementing industry standards. These efforts aim to ensure that OTA solutions are interoperable, scalable, and secure across different vehicle platforms and manufacturers.
By enabling consistent and safe OTA mechanisms, Excelfore is advancing the operational backbone of the SDV.
The Benefits of Arm Zena CSS for AI-Defined Vehicles
Arm Zena CSS represents a unified platform architecture combining both hardware and software to streamline vehicle computing development.
The adoption of a standardized CSS yields several benefits:
- Simplified integration of software components from multiple vendors
- Improved interoperability across diverse hardware and software ecosystems
- Scalable performance enabling reuse across different vehicle classes, from economy to luxury
Virtual prototyping, supported by the SOAFEE blueprint, is instrumental in this process. It allows developers to test and validate SDV software on cloud-based virtual platforms, well before physical hardware is available. This reduces time-to-market and enhances software quality. Arm Zena CSS, therefore, provides the backbone for a unified computing platform — enabling a flexible, safe, and scalable environment for the AI-defined vehicle era.
Red Hat’s Trusted In-Vehicle OS for Automotive Innovation
The Red Hat In-Vehicle Operating System builds on the foundation of Red Hat Enterprise Linux®—trusted by 90% of the Fortune 500— to support mission-critical applications across multiple industries. It brings critical optimizations required for in-vehicle use cases, including performance improvements, efficient application isolation, safety guidance documentation, and functional safety certification.
For more information on the Red Hat in-vehicle OS, see: link
Red Hat is also developing a tailoring Application Development Platform, drawn from their broad portfolio of hybrid cloud solutions to bring automation and productivity to help automakers build an efficient software factory operation.
Excelfore has a long history of collaboration with Red Hat.
For an example of collaboration between Excelfore and Red Hat, see: link
Excelfore Support for the “Shift-Left” Methodology
The “shift-left” methodology advocates moving testing, validation, and quality assurance earlier in the software development lifecycle, and at the same time moving all aspects of software development to begin earlier in the system development lifecycle. In SDV development, this is
critical due to the long timelines that result from prior sequential approaches to the safety and complexity constraints involved.
Excelfore supports this approach by integrating its OTA capabilities directly into the SOAFEE Blueprint and virtual development environments. By delivering updates to virtual platforms in the cloud, Excelfore enables:
- Early testing of software components and update mechanisms
- Continuous integration and validation using cloud-based tools
- Scalable and repeatable simulation, reducing the reliance on physical prototypes
The shift-left impact can be taken to even greater levels by embracing open source and open collaboration within the automotive communities we have discussed already. First, taking the open-source Linux operating system example, automotive developers can begin middleware and
application development in the cloud, on today’s high performance virtual platform environments immediately, without requiring licensing and commercial agreements before even gaining access to the operating platform.
Second, the pace of innovation and the available talent pool familiar with Linux is far greater than bespoke, proprietary operating systems. And as the automotive collaborative communities continue to build more common, open building blocks and reference implementations, developers can adopt the output of this shared development and free up more of their engineering resources for differentiated software layers further up the stack.
The figure below depicts the dramatic impact adopting open source and open collaboration can have, but of course the requirement for functional safety certification for Linux has long been a barrier to entry. This barrier has now been overcome with Red Hat having achieved the first functional safety certification of a Linux product as a Safety Element out-of-Context (SEooC) against the ISO 26262 Edition 2, 2018- Level ASIL-B standard. And Red Hat has demonstrated that this achieved while utilizing the efficiency and flexibility of standard container technologies as well.
The result is faster development cycles, earlier defect detection, and significant cost savings—an essential evolution for automotive development teams seeking agility without compromising safety or compliance.
Conclusion
Conclusion
Excelfore contributions—spanning TSN, OTA, virtual development, and standardization—are instrumental in enabling the Zena CSS platform to deliver on its promise of standardized compute platform to enable the AI-defined vehicle era. By advancing the “shift-left” methodology and leading in full vehicle connectivity, including in-vehicle Ethernet TSN and vehicle-to-cloud eSync OTA integration, Excelfore empowers automotive developers to innovate faster, more securely, and with greater efficiency.
Arm Zena CSS represents a major leap in vehicle compute architecture, offering standardized, scalable computing from concept to deployment. Excelfore support of this initiative reinforces its role as a key enabler within the evolving SDV ecosystem.
Looking forward, Excelfore remains committed to driving innovation and collaboration, ensuring that the software-defined future of mobility is secure, agile, and interconnected.
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