PULSAR
A next generation Service Oriented
Vehicle Software Platform
The Pulsar Platform stack
What is the Pulsar Platform?
Nebula provides an automotive platform, Pulsar, that takes care of all the grunt work so you can focus on the applications that makes your product unique.
Along with the platform, a end-to-end design studio suite, Cosmos, is also provided to work with the platform from project definition all they way to a ready SOP vehicle and beyond.
The Pulsar platform is:
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Modular – Pick and choose which parts to include in the platform
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Scalable – Use it in a small LIN-slave to a massive centralized ECU for AD
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Efficient – Small footprint, low CPU/RAM utilization and low latency
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Secure – State of the art security mechanisms and strategies
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Safe – Designed from the ground up with system safety in mind
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Multi-platform – Can be deployed to several different run-time platforms and programming languages
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Affordable – With a scalable business model it can be applied for anything from proof-of-concept pre-studies to a mass production vehicle platform.
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Supports many Design Patterns i.e. Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), Client-Server, layered architecture, …
It provides a modular middleware platform that handles much of the complexity through:
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Service Oriented Architecture
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Service Discovery
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Signal-to-Service gateways
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Adaptations to different runtimes and protocols
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Various base services
What Nebula can provide?
The Pulsar platform is fully modular so you can decide which modules you want to be included from the com stack and platform services.
Together with the platform we highly recommend also using the Cosmos design studio.
Additionally, Nebula will provide a gallery of vehicle services and applications to choose from. This is a great option if you have limited inhouse resources and want to focus on the areas where you want to be unique as a brand and for other areas use our functions to get faster to the market.
Simple example topology showing how the Pulsar Platform can be deployed?
Challenges in a modern automotive platform
The complexity of all automotive systems has grown exponentially during the last few years which bring new challenges to the OEMs.
It is due to an increased complexity of both functionality, technology and the eco-system surrounding the vehicle.
At the same time there is a paradigm shift in moving towards a Service Oriented architecture and a higher demand for connected vehicles
Increased complexity
As more advanced functionality gets added to the vehicles the complexity grows
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Exponential growth in SW, data, networking etc.
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Increased number of variants and requirements for backwards compatibility
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Shorter time to market
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Many different suppliers of SW and HW, independent deliveries
Moving from traditional design to SOA
Developing a Service oriented platform differs very much from a traditional way
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New communication protocols
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Loose coupling
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More SW centric design
Connected vehicles
With vehicles becoming more connected and an increase part of the functionality moving into the cloud, the need for advanced security solutions are evident.