Standardizing data interchanges among design tools in the ECU development process: Pt. 1 - Models, formats, and data management

The challenges in developing electronics systems for vehicles are greater than ever. Standards such as those of ASAM e.V. or the AUTOSAR initiative help to create a reliable basis for everyone involved in the development process. Among other things, there is an increasing need for system models and description formats that will cover all the aspects of an electronic control unit (ECU) or of an ECU network. While definition work on such formats is still going on, development tools that can process them are also becoming established. One example is the SystemDesk architecture design tool from dSPACE.

This article focuses on the question of what role these architecture-oriented tools play in the development process—for example, how they interact with tools for creating function models and how they integrate into various version control systems.

Introduction

With considerable commitment from numerous companies in the automotive industry, the AUTOSAR initiative has set out to pioneer a whole new basis for developing ECU software. The aim is to make software development much more efficient and flexible by using a standardized software architecture and standard data interchange formats for formal system models and for configuration data. The results of standardization work have now achieved high maturity, and further activities are planned.

At the same time, development tools that support the AUTOSAR standards and the proposed development methods are already available. These include SystemDesk and the AUTOSAR extension to TargetLink® the production code generator from dSPACE, and the configuration tool tresos® from Elektrobit (EB). These tools are already being used in industry's AUTOSAR projects. Experience gathered from these projects and further developments to the AUTOSAR standards will be worked into future versions of the tools.

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