Seventh Automotive Ethernet Congress is Taking Place in February

In just under two weeks, the seventh Automotive Ethernet Congress will open its doors - this time in digital form and on three days due to the Corona pandemic: From February 09 to 11, 2021, participants can expect 19 exciting presentations including two keynotes and three workshops.

Automated driving, networking, digitization, electrification - the automotive industry is undergoing the greatest transformation in its history. Carmanufacturers and suppliers must prepare for radical changes – on the one hand, the market is characterized by increasingly fierce competition and cost pressure. On the other hand, technologies from consumer electronics must be taken up, which digitalization is pushing into the vehicle. End consumers no longer just expect their vehicles to transport them safely, but above all to offer functions that they are used to from their mobile devices.

This requires a high-performance in-vehicle network (IVN), and here the question arises: »Is it better to combine the entire IVN under one technology, or is the diversity of technologies an advantage?« Dr. Kirsten Matheus, BMW, will discuss this fundamental issue in her keynote, »Automotive Ethernet Beyond Speed.«

The second keynote comes from Robert Bosch. Ricardo Gonzalez de Oliveira will discuss service-based architectures (Service-Oriented Architecture, SOA). These are neither new nor particularly complicated. Quite the contrary. With the introduction of Ethernet in vehicles, service-based communication became a reality. This seems to have brought the great SOA dream of independent use of hardware and software within reach. Nevertheless, the automotive industry is still far from exploiting the full potential. The keynote deals with various challenges, such as signal versus service - a big misunderstanding, syntax versus semantics or the proverbial Tower of Babel and also the cost problem.

We can also look forward to the presentation by the newly merged company Stellantis – Dr. Trista Lin and Nicolas Morand will shed light on »Architecting towards a Software-Defined Vehicle«.