NXP partners Green Hills software for ADAS and autonomous driving applications

NXP Semiconductors, a Netherlands-based semiconductor manufacturing company and Green Hills Software, a US-based embedded system have announced a strategic partnership focused on production-grade ADAS and autonomous driving applications. The partnership, and the addition of Green Hills’ ‘INTEGRITY’ real-time operating system (RTOS), could expand the growing ecosystem surrounding NXP’s S32 portfolio for ADAS and central compute systems. Together, the companies aim to deliver high-volume, production-grade electronic control units (ECUs) that foster the development and testing of life-critical autonomous applications.

NXP and Green Hills have provided leading carmakers and tier 1 suppliers with the safe technology required to produce millions of cars over the years. This joint experience is being leveraged to tackle the next levels of autonomous development for SAE Levels 2, 3 and beyond.

NXP offers its S32 family for safe and reliable autonomous driving, which includes NXP’s scalable portfolio of functional safety products for ADAS. The S32 family is designed to address the performance, safety and near-term commercial needs of Levels 2 and 3 driving, while providing an eye to longer-term release in Level 4 and 5 autonomous vehicles.

Green Hills brings its Integrity RTOS technology as the centrepiece of its software platform for safe autonomous driving. For over 20 years, the Integrity architecture is claimed to have been chosen when fail-safe assurance is mandated for mission and life-critical systems in markets spanning aircraft flight controls to surgical robotics, making it the most highly-certified RTOS in the embedded industry.  

Independent accredited organisations are said to have certified Integrity or Integrity-178 at the highest safety and security levels for embedded applications including automotive (ISO 26262 ASIL D), aircraft avionics (DO-178 Level A), high robustness security (Common Criteria EAL 6+), industrial (IEC 61508 SIL 3) and railway (EN 50128 SIL 4). Green Hills also provides its ‘MULTI IDE’ (integrated development environment) tools suite and C/C++ run time libraries that are pre-qualified to ASIL D and SIL 4 to support customers’ critical application development.

The first demonstration of the NXP and Green Hills collaboration shows how life-critical path planning and vehicle control software can run in safe and secure Integrity RTOS partitions on the NXP BlueBox embedded autonomous driving platform. The demonstration is an example of the initial technical challenges and solutions involved in developing safe, secure, production-grade ECUs.

Kamal Khouri, vice-president and general manager, advanced driver assistance, NXP, said,“The focus of the autonomous driving ecosystem has shifted from performance at any cost to safety for mass production roll out.  We are pleased to partner with Green Hills Software and welcome its Integrity safety operating system with our roadmap for autonomous driving. Both companies offer their proven automotive DNA for this collaboration, to provide customers a trusted and realizable platform made for the rigours of autonomous vehicle industrialization.”

Dan Mender, vice-president, business development, Green Hills Software said, “The NXP S32 portfolio is impressive for its performance, safety and scalability. We are pleased to partner with NXP to apply our safety and security leadership with technology already proven in automotive, avionics and military systems. The Integrity RTOS with Multivisor secure virtualisation and MULTI IDE provide the essential software foundation to protect and secure mission and life-critical autonomous functions.”