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ECU operating system aims at reducing complexity in the car

ECU operating system aims at reducing complexity in the car

Technology News |
By eeNews Europe



With the EB Tresos Safety Multicore OS, Elektrobit rolls out a critical building block and an enabler for the automobile industry’s plans towards automated driving. Any kind of automated driving functions will be per se safety relevant – which means that the Electronic Control Units (ECUs) that run the respective algorithms have to be designed according to the rules defined in ISO26262, and they have to be laid out for the highest safety level, ASIL D, explained Florian Wandling, Department Head for Innovations, Car Infrastructure, at Elektrobit.

Safety however is not the only motivation to develop this operating system. "Automated driving, even Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS), demand ever more computing power," Wandling said. "The Problem is that the number of ECUs in the cars is hitting the limit." The same holds true for the wiring harness, with a weight of up to 250 kg already the second heaviest part in many cars. "What is needed in this situation is higher integration, at the hardware level as well as on the software level."

With this consideration, Elektrobit joins the growing group of OEMs and tier ones that call for domain controllers that centralise many software tasks as opposed to the "one task, one ECU" approach the automotive industry pursued since the inception of electronic controls in cars. The EB Tresos Safety Multicore OS therefore will support multitasking and run on multicore processors with up to 6 cores. An important aspect is that it enables car makers to integrate applications from different vendors on one processor platform. Users also can flexibly distribute software components to different cores.

Currently, only 32-bit processors such as the Qorivas from Freescale and Infineon’s Aurix family meet this description, but there is no technical limitation to port the operating system to 64-bit architectures once they are available for the automotive market. "We will support all multicore architectures that will become available in the near future", Wandling said.

Contrary to expectations aired by market watchers the EB Safety Multicore OS does not deal with virtualisation. Instead, the OS is designed to ensure safe and secure task separation. "After all, the safe operation must be guaranteed for all tasks even if one task crashes", Wandling said. Towards this end, the OS makes heavy use of memory partitioning and hardware features like safe watchdog timers. Among other features, it supports a super user mode and a standard user mode.

The operating system is not entirely new. Its technology is based on the EB single-core safety OS currently in use in multiple production vehicles. No wonder that it already has its customers are committed to deploy the multicore system – in the first place the usual suspects among the European premium carmakers. "But we see also interest from US OEMs", said Wandling.

Related articles:

New MCU functionalities in light of ISO 26262

Automotive processor get ISO 26262 ASIL D qualified code tools

Connected car: Where security threats meet new business opportunities

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