SOAFEE
An Arm-initiated industry alliance defining a cloud-native architecture for vehicle software, so workloads develop in the cloud and deploy in the car.
SOAFEE (Scalable Open Architecture for Embedded Edge) is an industry alliance initiated by Arm in 2021 that defines a cloud-native architecture for vehicle software. Its goal is that automotive workloads can be developed and tested in the cloud using standard cloud tooling — containers, orchestration, CI/CD — and then deployed unchanged to embedded hardware in the vehicle.
The core deliverable is an open architecture and reference implementation built on container technology with automotive extensions for real-time, safety and mixed-criticality requirements — the aspects standard cloud stacks do not address. Members span chipmakers, OEMs, Tier 1s, cloud providers and software vendors.
SOAFEE matters because development speed has become a competitive metric. If most vehicle software can be validated in virtual environments before it ever touches a test car, OEMs shorten release cycles and cut hardware dependency — the same shift that Eclipse SDV and OEM vehicle OS programs pursue from different angles.
Related: Central compute / HPC · Eclipse SDV · Middleware (automotive)