Digital Automotive Hardware
The automotive industry is undergoing a fundamental transformation. Vehicles are becoming software-defined, connected and increasingly autonomous, while their electronic architectures are evolving from hundreds of distributed electronic control units towards powerful domain, zonal and centralized computing platforms.
This transformation is changing the role of hardware. processors, AI accelerators, real-time controllers, networking and other semiconductor technologies are no longer simply components within a vehicle. They are becoming a strategic foundation for vehicle performance, safety, cybersecurity and innovation. For Europe, this creates both a challenge and an opportunity: how can the automotive industry maintain control over the critical computing technologies that will underpin the next generation of vehicles?
From electronic control units to software-defined vehicles
Traditional vehicles rely on a large number of specialized electronic control units (ECUs), each responsible for a particular function. As vehicles become more connected and software-driven, this architecture is evolving. Computing resources are increasingly being consolidated into domain and zonal controllers, with the longer-term potential to move towards centralized vehicle computing. These architectures require significantly more capable processors, high-performance application processors, real-time compute, AI acceleration and high-speed networking.
At the same time, these systems must meet demanding requirements for functional safety, cybersecurity, reliability, energy efficiency and long-term availability. The result is a growing dependence on advanced digital automotive hardware.
The future software-defined vehicle therefore depends not only on software innovation, but on the availability of powerful, secure, scalable and flexible computing hardware.
The challenge: control over the computing foundation
Much of today’s automotive compute infrastructure is built around proprietary processor architectures and technology ecosystems developed outside Europe. Leading semiconductor companies have created highly integrated platforms that combine processor intellectual property, accelerators, development tools and software ecosystems. These platforms can provide excellent performance and mature development environments, but they can also create long-term dependencies for automotive manufacturers and Tier 1 suppliers.
For European industry, several strategic challenges emerge from this.
Limited architectural control
Proprietary processor architectures can restrict the ability of European companies to customize, extend or deeply inspect the underlying hardware.
Supply-chain and geopolitical dependency
Growing geopolitical uncertainty and export restrictions highlight the importance of maintaining resilient access to critical computing technologies.
Vendor and ecosystem lock-in
Hardware, software and development tools are increasingly interconnected, making it difficult to change technology providers without significant migration costs.
Safety and cybersecurity requirements
Modern automotive systems require deep understanding of hardware behaviour and strong integration between hardware, software, safety and security. Transparency and architectural control are therefore increasingly valuable.
An open foundation for automotive compute
One opportunity to address these challenges is RISC-V, an open instruction set architecture that allows processors to be designed and extended without dependence on a proprietary instruction set licence. RISC-V provides a foundation on which different types of processors and accelerators can be developed, from small real-time microcontrollers to high-performance application processors and AI-enabled compute platforms.
For automotive applications, its modular nature creates the possibility of developing hardware that is tailored to specific requirements while maintaining a common architectural foundation. This can support a more open European ecosystem in which processors, accelerators and other IP can be developed, reused and integrated across different products and applications. The objective is not simply to create another processor architecture. It is to establish a scalable and reusable foundation for European digital automotive hardware.
A common foundation for the next generation of automotive processors
European semiconductor and technology organisations are developing key building blocks for future RISC-V-based automotive processors. The focus is on creating reusable technologies and components that can support different processor and chip designs, helping establish a common foundation for next-generation automotive computing.
Supporting the evolution of vehicle architectures
The technologies developed can support the automotive industry’s transition across multiple generations of vehicle architectures.
At the edge of the vehicle, real-time processors can control safety-critical and time-sensitive functions while providing deterministic behaviour and high reliability.
As functions become consolidated, more powerful processors can manage multiple vehicle functions while communicating with sensors, actuators and other computing nodes.
High-performance application processors and AI accelerators provide a pathway towards increasingly centralized vehicle computing architectures, including demanding ADAS and autonomous-driving workloads.
Competing through differentiation
The objective is not to simply reproduce existing high-performance computing platforms. Companies such as NVIDIA have demonstrated the strength of combining powerful hardware with tightly integrated software ecosystems. Replicating such a vertically integrated model would require enormous investment and long-term commercial commitments.
The opportunity lies in developing open, modular and certifiable computing technologies for safety-critical and security-sensitive applications, combining high-performance processing with real-time capabilities and edge AI. This approach is particularly relevant to automotive systems, where performance is only one part of the equation. Hardware must also meet demanding requirements for safety, cybersecurity, determinism, reliability, energy efficiency and long-term availability.
RISC-V can provide the architectural foundation for this approach, while a common European ecosystem can provide the IP, tools, integration methodologies and silicon expertise needed to turn that architecture into competitive products.
Towards European digital automotive sovereignty
Digital automotive hardware will play an increasingly important role in Europe’s ability to compete in software-defined and autonomous vehicles. By developing a common foundation for RISC-V automotive processors, accelerators and chiplet-based systems, the project aims to strengthen European control over critical computing technologies while enabling collaboration across semiconductor companies, technology providers, SMEs and the automotive industry.
The expected outcome is more than a collection of individual processor designs. It is a European ecosystem for scalable, interoperable and reusable automotive compute. Such a foundation can reduce dependence on proprietary technology, support innovation across the European semiconductor value chain and create new opportunities for future generations of processors and automotive platforms.
Ultimately, the ambition is to give Europe greater control over the digital hardware at the heart of tomorrow’s vehicles — and to provide a foundation from which European industry can compete in the global era of software-defined, connected and intelligent mobility.