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Over the past three decades the automotive electronics industry has progressed from transistorized voltage regulators in the 1960's to vehicles today with more than 30 electronic modules containing complex integrated circuits such as microprocessors, DSPs and smart analog ICs. These sophisticated ECUs (Electronic Control Units) have been primarily driven by the need to meet Government regulations on emissions and fuel economy and partially by market pressures for differentiation. The result has been a proliferation of independent, self supporting electronic modules with complex wiring interconnects, and, in many cases, redundant features. This “add a function, add a module” approach coupled with traditional design methodologies has created new challenges for the automotive industry in the areas of costs, diagnostics and more recently design cycle time.