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Future applications in the automotive domain such as distributed control functions need a highly dependable communication system. The current FlexRay standard already provides high transmission speeds and addresses deterministic data communication. This paper shows how to enhance the safety properties for handling a new set of applications and speeding up the communication even more. The concept of Layered FlexRay is based on the FlexRay protocol and addresses the requirements of safety-relevant applications in a distributed communication network. An implementation of this approach is depicted with a Safety Core hardware chip. It is designed to handle the communication between the FlexRay system beneath and the application on the host CPU above, providing highly efficient data management and execution of safety functions which otherwise would have to be executed in software on the host CPU.

The term X-by-Wire is commonly used in the automotive industry to describe the notion of replacing current mechanical or hydraulic chassis and powertrain systems with pure electro-mechanical systems. The paper describes the current trends and the architecture of future chassis electronics systems. The first part of the paper covers the systems architecture of x-by-wire electronics systems. We describe the network and the software architecture in more detail. The paper also explains some of the software components, in particular the operating system and the communication layer. The second part of the paper gives a description of the current state of the development process for software intended for safety-relevant systems. A possible tool chain for this development process, current possibilities as well as limitations and challenges are described.