Arm says new Zena platform can cut car development time by 50%

The big picture: While people have been discussing the automotive market as the next big tech-device opportunity for some time now, in reality, today's cars haven't advanced as much as many had hoped. Sure, we have larger, more sophisticated screens and some assisted driving features, but we've yet to reach the kind of transformative, smartphone-level impact in most of the vehicles we're buying or driving today. A significant part of the issue lies in the long and tedious automotive development process, particularly in how technology is adopted into modern vehicle platforms. Traditionally, automakers would wait for chip designs to be completed, then integrate individual elements into broader car platforms. Only after that could they begin writing software tailored to those finalized hardware designs. Last year, Arm took a major step toward shortening the typical 3- to 4-year development cycles by introducing two key innovations. First, it unveiled a full suite of automotive-grade pro ... Read full article.