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Leading the industry in making RISC-V the open standard for automotive

Cars are evolving rapidly into intelligent, software-defined vehicles. To keep pace, the automotive industry needs open, flexible technologies that scale over time. Infineon is enabling that flexibility by bringing RISC‑V architecture into the vehicle.

Software-defined vehicle
Article

Mar 04, 2026

The transformation of vehicle computing

The automotive industry is undergoing a fundamental transformation. Vehicles are evolving into software‑defined systems, learning machines on wheels. Cars feature a growing number of sensors that generate millions of data points every second, creating a real‑time digital view of the vehicle's surroundings. Onboard artificial intelligence interprets this data to understand situations and derive actions. Intelligence becomes digital. The vehicle becomes a physical expression of AI.

This shift is pushing traditional vehicle architectures to their limits. Electrical and electronic designs built around numerous control units and complex wiring can no longer meet the demands of scalability, performance and long lifecycles. Software-defined vehicles (SDVs) require a new computing foundation—one that is open, flexible and designed to evolve over time. This is where RISC‑V comes in.

RISC‑V drives innovation and collaboration as SDVs become reality. Infineon introduces an automotive RISC‑V microcontroller family within the AURIX™ brand, extending a proven portfolio that includes TriCore™ and ARM®‑based solutions.

A scalable architecture that avoids lock‑in

RISC‑V is an open instruction set architecture—a shared, royalty‑free blueprint for processors. It enables innovation on a common foundation without vendor lock‑in. A clean base ISA adds standardized options for performance, vectors, functional safety and domain‑specific acceleration. Openness strengthens tools and software—and ensures long‑term technological roadmap transparency.

RISC-V scales widely across cores and performance classes. It is cost-efficient and enables dependability, flexibility, and interoperability—essential for SDV platforms. It reduces migration effort, improves affordability and complements existing architectures. It does not replace them. It gives automakers more choice.

Openness as a growth advantage

Stronger collaboration fosters greater choice, accelerates learning, and drives rapid progress. An open, flexible platform removes barriers, provides better scalability, and consequently improves fit‑for‑function, making migration easier and costs more predictable. A global ecosystem community contributes tools, knowledge, and innovation.

Within such an open environment, software becomes far more reusable: what is developed once can be applied across different vehicles and brands. RISC‑V extends this advantage even further. Code written for RISC‑V can run across multiple profiles because the ISA profile definition aligns hardware and software to a common foundation. This consistency supports code reuse, enhances portability, and streamlines integration.

As a result, development becomes simpler overall. A common instruction set means fewer tools and smoother integration processes. And as SDVs evolve, they require hardware that can evolve with them — a need RISC‑V is inherently designed to meet, scaling effortlessly toward the mobility demands of tomorrow.

Benefits

  • Open standard for the entire platform (HW&SW together) is fosters best-in-class flexibility
  • Scalability, compatibility and reduced migration efforts lead to better affordability and cost control
  • Supported by a fast/adjacent growing partner ecosystem for customer-centric solutions

A global ecosystem - built together

Infineon is building a local and global automotive ecosystem by combining established partnerships, new innovators and adjacent domains such as IoT and AI—empowered by open standards. Infineon supports customers in developing customer‑centric systems efficiently and at scale with its clear RISC‑V roadmap, early development enabled through pre‑silicon virtual prototypes, and close collaboration with standardization bodies.

RISC‑V at industrial scale

Together with other industry leaders, we co-founded Quintauris in order to accelerate the global adoption of RISC-V. We focus on turning RISC-V into an industrial-grade platform by enabling next-generation hardware, providing reference architectures and establishing industry-ready solutions—with an initial focus on automotive.

We are strengthening the ecosystem with Quintauris: We're promoting innovation, lowering entry barriers for smaller companies and unlocking scalability for established players. This collective approach accelerates standardization, supports industrialization and drives ecosystem maturity.

By shaping Quintauris, we are reaffirming our commitment to making RISC-V the open standard for automotive—enabling faster time-to-market, greater flexibility and improved cost-efficiency across the industry.

Ready for the future

Every car manufacturer is on a different journey. We support each step—from today's domain‑based systems to future software‑centric architectures. Customers receive tools, reference designs and deep system expertise—matched to their readiness. Our solutions reduce complexity, scale software and evolve vehicles over their lifetime.

Open architectures enable software‑defined vehicles. RISC‑V makes them scalable. Together, we make them real.