Affordable and Safe High Performance Vehicle Computers with Ultra-Fast On-Board Ethernet for Automated Driving

Autonomous Driving at level 5 requires high-performance vehicle computers (HPVC) to perform the multitude of complex functions, such as comprehensive vision processing, object recognition, intelligent traffic system, and task dispatch between different ECUs in the car. Today, HPVC systems are available as development platforms but not ready to be deployed under harsh operating conditions of real vehicles yet. The paper assesses the requirements, discusses the current state of the art, and introduces architectural and design solutions for a robust and safe automotive grade HPVC platform. The required high computational power and all the necessary communication interfaces will be provided at costs allowing the production of passenger cars for the broad public.