The Challenges of Next Generation Automotive Benchmarks 2007-01-0512

More than ever, microcontroller performance in cars has a direct impact on the driving experience, on compliance with improved safety, ever-stricter emissions regulations, and on fuel economy. The simple microcontrollers formerly used in automobiles are now being replaced by powerful number-crunchers whose performance can no longer be measured in MIPS. Instead, their effectiveness is based on a coherent partitioning between analog and digital, hardware and software, tools and methodology. To make an informed choice among the available devices, what the designer needs are benchmarks that are specific to automotive applications, and which provide a realistic representation of how the device will perform in the automotive environment.

This presentation will explore the role of new benchmarks in the development of complex automotive applications. The challenges of developing such benchmarks will be provided, the hardware required for their implementation, and the process by which a new suite of benchmarks that addresses these concerns is being implemented by EEMBC. The goal of this suite is to take every factor into consideration in creating an accurate measurement of a system's true performance and thus to develop a benchmark recognized by the worldwide automotive vendors for its efficacy in measuring the performance of every component in automotive applications including microcontroller (μC) cores, buses, peripherals, memory, compilers, profilers, operating systems, software (SW) drivers, and auto code generators. This new benchmark is being targeted to be a tool to define performance requirements between the members of the automotive chain: OEMs, Tierls, silicon suppliers, and tool vendors.