SOME/IP is an automotive protocol used for communication between vehicle ECUs. It is an application layer protocol, used in automotive ethernet.

Communication is necessary between between sensors, actuators and control units within a vehicle. These were acheived by using CAN bus. With advancement in technology, automotive systems needed mechanism for transfering large amounts of data for applications like camera based driver assistance systems, in-vehicle entertainment, software upgrades, etc. CAN bus was primarily designed for low bandwidth applications and hence these new requirements could not be accommodated with CAN.