The evolution of automotive electronic architecture has spurred the development of domain controllers.
Early automotive electronic systems employed a distributed architecture, with each Electronic Control Unit (ECU) operating independently and responsible for different vehicle functions, such as engine control, braking system control, and body electronics. While this architecture met the diverse functional needs of automobiles for a period, its drawbacks gradually became apparent as vehicles became increasingly intelligent. Numerous independent ECUs led to complex wiring, increased costs, and inefficient communication between different ECUs, making it difficult to meet the demands of intelligent vehicles for rapid data processing and coordinated control.
To address these issues, a centralized electronic and electrical architecture emerged, with the domain controller as its core component. The domain controller integrates functions previously scattered across multiple ECUs, centralizing related control functions into one or a few high-performance controllers according to the vehicle's functional domains, such as powertrain, chassis, body, cockpit, and autonomous driving domains. In this way, the domain controller significantly reduces the amount of wiring within the vehicle, lowers costs, and substantially improves system integration and communication efficiency, laying a solid foundation for the development of intelligent vehicles.
Advantages of Domain Controller Functional Integration
Domain controllers possess powerful functional integration capabilities. Taking an autonomous driving domain controller as an example, it needs to integrate data from multiple sensors such as cameras, millimeter-wave radar, and lidar to perform real-time perception and analysis of the vehicle's surrounding environment. Simultaneously, it must use this information to precisely control the vehicle's driving path and speed. In traditional distributed architectures, data from different sensors is processed by their respective ECUs, resulting in complex and inefficient information exchange. Autonomous driving domain controllers, however, can integrate these functions, using high-performance chips and optimized algorithms to achieve rapid fusion and processing of sensor data, thereby making more accurate and timely decisions and improving the safety and reliability of autonomous driving.
In the intelligent cockpit domain, the domain controller also plays a crucial role. It integrates various functions such as the infotainment system, navigation system, and vehicle information display, enabling unified control and interaction across multiple in-vehicle displays. For example, the driver can operate various vehicle functions through the central control screen, while vehicle driving information and multimedia content can be flexibly switched and shared between different displays according to user needs. This functional integration not only enhances the user experience but also makes the in-vehicle electronic systems more concise and aesthetically pleasing.
Improve performance and computing power
Domain controllers are equipped with high-performance processors and abundant memory resources, possessing powerful computing capabilities to meet the massive data processing demands of intelligent vehicles. During operation, sensors generate vast amounts of data, such as road condition information during autonomous driving and multimedia data from the intelligent cockpit. Domain controllers can quickly process this data, ensuring real-time system response. For example, NVIDIA's DRIVE Orin autonomous driving domain controller boasts a computing power of up to 254 TOPS, capable of simultaneously processing data from multiple cameras, radars, and other sensors, enabling accurate perception of complex road conditions and rapid generation of autonomous driving decisions. This powerful computing capability allows intelligent vehicles to maintain stable and reliable operation even in scenarios involving high-speed driving and complex road conditions, providing users with a safe and comfortable driving experience.
Support for software upgrades and iterations
Domain controllers provide strong support for software upgrades and iterations in intelligent vehicles. In traditional distributed architectures, upgrading vehicle software requires individual operations for each ECU, a cumbersome process prone to compatibility issues. Domain controllers, however, utilize a unified hardware platform and software architecture, allowing software developers to perform overall upgrades via OTA (Over-The-Air) updates, enabling the updating and optimization of vehicle functions. For example, Tesla continuously adds new Autopilot features and optimizes the smart cockpit user interface through OTA upgrades, ensuring vehicles maintain technological advancement even after purchase and providing ongoing value enhancement for users. This software upgrade capability of domain controllers not only reduces maintenance costs for automakers but also enhances user loyalty and drives innovation in the intelligent vehicle industry.
Promote industrial ecosystem integration
The development of domain controllers has also promoted the integration of the automotive industry ecosystem. On the one hand, automakers can collaborate closely with chip suppliers and software developers to jointly create high-performance, intelligent domain controller products. For example, Huawei partnered with Seres to launch a domain controller based on Huawei's intelligent vehicle solution, achieving deep integration of hardware and software and enhancing the intelligence level of vehicles. On the other hand, the standardization and openness of domain controllers have also attracted numerous third-party developers to participate in the construction of the intelligent vehicle software ecosystem. By opening up the interfaces and development tools of domain controllers, third-party developers can create a wide variety of applications, such as personalized driver assistance functions and intelligent cockpit applications, further enriching the functionality and user experience of intelligent vehicles and driving the prosperous development of the entire intelligent vehicle industry ecosystem.
As a key element of the next-generation intelligent vehicle electronic software system, domain controllers play an irreplaceable role in automotive electronic architecture transformation, functional integration, performance improvement, software upgrades, and industrial ecosystem integration. With continuous technological advancements and the deepening application of their applications, domain controllers will continue to drive the development of intelligent vehicles to a higher level, bringing people a more intelligent, convenient, and safe travel experience, and leading the automotive industry into a new stage of development.
