SOVD – The Diagnostic Standard of Tomorrow

Due to current megatrends such as autonomous driving, significantly higher computing power is required in the vehicle than can be provided by today's ECUs. Consequently, for reasons of redundancy, at least two high-performance computers (HPCs) are being installed in the vehicle to implement both centralized control and diagnostic functions. In addition, today's ECUs will continue to be used for local tasks for a long time to come. 
An HPC provides its own diagnostics, function diagnostics and - since it enables connection to the Internet - also the interface for "normal" ECUs. From the point of view of an external tester, this approach means a significantly increased quality of information, since a lot of information is already pre-filtered, aggregated and evaluated before it is transmitted. 

Such an interface for diagnostics naturally has numerous other interested parties in addition to the OEMs. Standardization of the interface is therefore an obvious step, and is currently being carried out in ASAM e.V. under the name SOVD (Service Oriented Vehicle Diagnostics). The goal is to define an interface that allows diagnostics on the vehicle, for example in the workshop, via remote access or as a tester directly in the vehicle (Proximity, Remote, InVehicle). To simplify standardization and subsequent implementations, as many existing mechanisms and standards as possible are to be used (e.g. TCP/IP).