Method, device, and real-time network for highly integrated automotive systems

A method, comprising:

• integrating infrastructure software functions and automotive applications on an automotive ECU device (HI-ECU1),
• wherein the ECU device (HI-ECU1) comprises a hardware architecture (HWARCH1) and a software architecture (SWARCH1),
• wherein the hardware architecture (HWARCH1) comprises two or more system-on-chips (SOC1-SOC4),
• wherein at least two of said system-on-chips (SOC1-SOC4) each comprise two or more processing cores (CORE1-CORE8) and means to communicate (COM1-COM2) with at least one other system-on-chip,
• wherein the hardware architecture (HWARCH1) comprises memory (MEM) and means to communicate (COM) with other ECU devices (HI-ECU1),
• wherein the software architecture (SWARCH1) comprises one or more virtual machine monitors (VMM1, VMM2),
• wherein each of said virtual machine monitors (VMM1, VMM2) executes one or more virtual machines (VM-A, VM-B, VM-C, VM-D),
• wherein at least two of said virtual machines (VM-A, VM-B, VM-C, VM-D) each execute an operating system,
• wherein the operating system executes one or more tasks (TASK1-TASK12),
• wherein the execution of two or more of the tasks (TASK1-TASK12) uses a time-triggered paradigm,
• wherein the tasks (TASK1-TASK12) are tasks of automotive applications from at least two different automotive domains and are tasks of infrastructure software functions,
• wherein according to the use of the time-triggered paradigm:
• two or more cores (CORE1-CORE8) in two or more of the system-on-chips (SOC1-SOC4) have access to a data structure that represents a synchronized time, and start to execute the two or more tasks (TASK1-TASK12) at configured points in time with respect to said synchronized time, wherein the points in time with respect to said synchronized time at which points in time at least two tasks (TASK1-TASK12) start to execute are configured in memory (MEM) and/or storage (STORAGE) of the ECU device (HI-ECU1), and/or in local memories of the system-on-chips (SOC1-SOC4), and/or
• two or more cores (CORE1-CORE8) in two or more system-on-chips (SOC1-SOC4) have access to the data structure that represents the synchronized time, and start to transmit one or more messages (MSG1, MSG2) at configured points in time with respect to said synchronized time, wherein the points in time with respect to said synchronized time at which points in time one or more messages (MSG1, MSG2) start to transmit are configured in memory (MEM) and/or storage (STORAGE) of the ECU device (HI-ECU1), and/or in local memories of the system-on-chips (SOC1-SOC4),
• wherein said configured points in time of the two or more tasks are sufficiently different from each other such that the at least two tasks that are being executed on the same core of the system-on-chips will not timely overlap with their execution times, and
• wherein according to the time-triggered paradigm, in order to enable the execution of tasks (TASK1-TASK12), activities of the virtual machine monitors (VVM1, VMM2), and/or the virtual machines (VM-A, VM-B, VM-C, VM-D) are scheduled with respect to said synchronized time.