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Journal Article

Mode-Dynamic Task Allocation and Scheduling for an Engine Management Real-Time System Using a Multicore Microcontroller

2014-04-01
2014-01-0257
A variety of methodologies to use embedded multicore controllers efficiently has been discussed in the last years. Several assumptions are usually made in the automotive domain, such as static assignment of tasks to the cores. This paper shows an approach for efficient task allocation depending on different system modes. An engine management system (EMS) is used as application example, and the performance improvement compared to static allocation is assessed. The paper is structured as follows: First the control algorithms for the EMS will be classified according to operating modes. The classified algorithms will be allocated to the cores, depending on the operating mode. We identify mode transition points, allowing a reliable switch without neglecting timing requirements. As a next step, it will be shown that a load distribution by mode-dependent task allocation would be better balanced than a static task allocation.
Journal Article

The Challenges of Devising Next Generation Automotive Benchmarks

2008-04-14
2008-01-0382
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 with incredible levels of peripheral integration. As a result, performance can no longer be measured in MIPS (Millions of Instructions Per Second). A microcontroller's effectiveness is based on coherent partitioning between analog and digital, hardware and software, tools and methodology. To make an informed choice among the available devices, the designer needs benchmarks that are specific to automotive applications, and which provide a realistic representation of how the device will perform in the automotive environment.
Technical Paper

The Challenges of Next Generation Automotive Benchmarks

2007-04-16
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.
Technical Paper

Implementing FlexRay on Silicon

2007-04-16
2007-01-1718
FlexRay1 is a high speed, time triggered and fault tolerant communication protocol, which was specified to meet the requirements of safety-critical automotive applications. The achieved maturity of FlexRay encourages the implementation on silicon. The CIC-3102 device is a standalone controller provided by Infineon Technologies. It runs the wide spread E-Ray3 IP from Bosch. A complete communication node for FlexRay requires additional devices for the physical layer and the application part. The CIC-310 can communicate with a host controller via three different interfaces micro link interface MLI, serial synchronous interface SSC, external bus XMU. Its physical layer interface corresponds to the FlexRay specification. The CIC-310 provides features like intelligent move engines to maximize the achievable data rate as well as to minimize the workload of the host. Therefore, the CIC-310 allows a very flexible and efficient way to build and operate FlexRay nodes.
Technical Paper

Advanced Gasoline Engine Management Platform for Euro IV & CHN IV Emission Regulation

2008-06-23
2008-01-1704
The increasingly stringent requirements in relation to emission reduction and onboard diagnostics are pushing the Chinese automotive industry toward more innovative solutions and a rapid increase in electronic control performance. To manage the system complexity the architecture will require being well structure on hardware and software level. The paper introduces GEMS-K1 (Gasoline Engine Management System - Kit 1). GEMS-K1 is a platform being compliant with Euro IV emission regulation for gasoline engines. The application software is developed using modeling language, the code is automatically generated from the model. The driver software has a well defined structure including microcontroller abstraction layer and ECU abstraction layer. The hardware is following design rules to be robust, 100% testable and easy to manufacture. The electronic components use the latest innovation in terms of architecture and technologies.
Technical Paper

Embedded System Tool to Support Debugging, Calibration, Fast Prototyping and Emulation

2004-03-08
2004-01-0304
Infineon's latest high-end automotive microcontrollers like TC1796 are complex Systems On Chip (SoC) with two processor cores and up to two internal multi-master buses. The complex interaction between cores, peripherals and environment provides a big challenge for debugging. For mission critical control like engine management the debugging approach must not be intrusive. The provided solution are dedicated Emulation Devices which are able to deal with several 10 Gbit/s of raw internal trace data with nearly no cost adder for mass production and system design. Calibration, which is used later in the development cycle, has different requirements, but is covered by the Emulation Devices as well. The architecture of TC1796ED comprises the unchanged TC1796 silicon layout, extended by a full In-Circuit Emulator (ICE) and calibration overlay memory on the same die. In most cases, the only debug/calibration tool hardware needed is a USB cable.
Technical Paper

Automotive Sensors & Sensor Interfaces

2004-03-08
2004-01-0210
The increasing legal requirements for safety, emission reduction, fuel economy and onboard diagnosis systems push the market for more innovative solutions with rapidly increasing complexity. Hence, the embedded systems that will have to control the automobiles have been developed at such an extent that they are now equivalent in scale and complexity to the most sophisticated avionics systems. This paper will demonstrate the key elements to provide a powerful, scalable and configurable solution that offers a migration pass to evolution and even revolution of automotive Sensors and Sensor interfaces. The document will explore different architectures and partitioning. Sensor technologies such as magnetic field sensors based on the hall effect as well as bulk and surface silicon micro machined sensors will be mapped to automotive applications by examples. Functions such as self-test, self-calibration and self-repair will be developed.
Technical Paper

Digital Knock Signal Conditioning using Fast ADC and DSP

2004-03-08
2004-01-0517
The increasing legal requirements for safety, emission reduction, fuel economy and onboard diagnosis systems is pushing the market for more innovative solutions with rapidly increasing complexity. Hence, the embedded systems that will have to control the automobiles have been developed at such an extent that they are now equivalent in scale and complexity to the most sophisticated avionics systems. The former analogue filter design is now replaced by digital signal processing. This paper will demonstrate the key elements to provide a powerful, scalable and configurable solution that offers a migration route to evolve and even revolutionize automotive electronics. To illustrate this migration toward digital processing the knock function has been developed. A simple RC filter is used as external anti-aliasing. To get the maximum flexibility the signal is very early converted and processed digitally. The micro-controller has been developed using a three-layered solution.
Technical Paper

Smart IGBT's for Advanced Distributed Ignition Systems

2004-03-08
2004-01-0518
Driven by factors like consumption, power output per liter, comfort and more stringent exhaust gas standards the powertain control area, has developed rapidly in the last decades. This trend has also brought with it many innovations in the ignition application. Today we can see a trend to Pencil-coil or Plug-top-coil ignition systems. The next step in system partitioning is to remove the power driver from the ECU and place it directly in/on the coil body. The advantages of the new partitioning - e.g. no high voltage wires, reduced power dissipation on the ECU - are paid with different, mainly tougher requirements for the electronic components. By using specialized technologies for the different functions - IGBT for switching the power, SPT for protection, supply and diagnostics - in chip-on-chip technology all required functions for a decentralized ignition system can be realized in a TO220/ TO263 package.
Technical Paper

Effective System Development Partitioning

2001-03-05
2001-01-1221
In terms of modern technical systems, the automotive sector is characterized by escalating complexity and functionality requirements. The development of embedded control systems has to meet highest demands regarding process-, time- and cost-optimization. Hence, the efficiency of software development becomes a crucial competitive advantage. Systems design engineers need effective tools and methods to achieve exemplary speed and productivity within the development phase. To obtain such tools and methods, semiconductor manufacturers and tool manufacturers must work closely together. Within the joint efforts of ETAS and Infineon, the software tool suite ASCET-SD was enhanced to generate efficient C code for Infineon's TriCore architecture mapped on ETAS's real-time operating system ERCOSEK. The processor interface to application & calibration tools was realized using the ETK probe based on a JTAG/Nexus link at very high bandwidth.
Technical Paper

X-by-Wire: Opportunities, Challenges and Trends

2003-03-03
2003-01-0113
This paper will outline the results of a study performed to analyze the market introduction of x-by-wire applications in the context of weak global industry environment, technological and legislative challenges, standardization issues and end customer benefits. This paper attempts to provide a bird-view on influence factors and impacts for the x-by-wire market, including e.g. the end customer's acceptance and legal environment driving further development in specific areas. Further, major driving forces on semiconductor/component level will be outlined regarding e.g. pin-count, computation performance and heat dissipation, but also possible scenarios and solutions towards safe and efficient system design and partitioning.
Technical Paper

TTCAN from Applications to Products in Automotive Systems

2003-03-03
2003-01-0114
This paper outlines the results of a study performed to analyze the mission of TTCAN from applications to products for automotive systems. As commonly acknowledged communication is one of the key elements for future and even present systems such as an automobile. A dramatically increasing number of busses and gateways even in low- to midrange vehicles is putting significant burden upon the validation scenario as well as the cost. Accordingly, numerous new initiatives have been started worldwide in order to find solutions to this; some of them by the definition of enhanced or new protocols. This paper shall have a look particular on the new standard of TTCAN (time-triggered communication on CAN). This protocol is based on the CAN data link layer as specified in ISO 11898-1 and may use standardized CAN physical layers such as specified in ISO 11898-2 (high-speed transceiver) or in ISO 11898-3 (fault-tolerant low-speed transceiver).
Technical Paper

Semiconductor Solutions for Piezo Injector Systems

2003-03-03
2003-01-0710
Increasing fuel costs and emission regulations are driving the car manufacturers to develop powerful but efficient engines. The 3-liter car (3-liter/100 km fuel consumption → 80 miles/gallon) is one achievement of these developments. Beside the pure mechanics electronics for fuel and air management are getting the key element for further improvement. Direct Injected (DI) engines are the standard for Diesel and are looking very promising for Gasoline. This SAE paper will discuss the differences of the operation principle of a solenoid and a Piezo based injector as well as the impact and the requirements for the semiconductors on the ECU especially under respect of future emission standards. A solution from Infineon Technologies will be presented.
Technical Paper

Future Engine Control Enabling Environment Friendly Vehicle

2011-04-12
2011-01-0697
The aim of this paper is to compile the state of the art of engine control and develop scenarios for improvements in a number of applications of engine control where the pace of technology change is at its most marked. The first application is control of downsized engines with enhancement of combustion using direct injection, variable valve actuation and turbo charging. The second application is electrification of the powertrain with its impact on engine control. Various architectures are explored such as micro, mild, full hybrid and range extenders. The third application is exhaust gas after-treatment, with a focus on the trade-off between engine and after-treatment control. The fourth application is implementation of powertrain control systems, hardware, software, methods, and tools. The paper summarizes several examples where the performance depends on the availability of control systems for automotive applications.
Technical Paper

Efficient Multi-Core Software Design Space Exploration for Hybrid Control Unit Integration

2014-04-01
2014-01-0260
Multi-core systems are adopted quickly in the automotive domain, Proof of concepts have been implemented for power train, body and chassis, involving hard real-time constraints. However, depending on the degree of integration, it can be costly, especially in those cases where existing single-core software has to be migrated over. Furthermore, there seems to be a high level of uncertainty, whether a found solution, with regards to partitioning, mapping and orchestration of software is close to an optimum solution. Some integrated solutions demonstrate considerably less performance, for instance due to communication overhead compared to execution on single-core systems. This paper discusses a methodology, as to how to effectively and efficiently investigate the software architecture design space for multi-core software development.
Technical Paper

Rapid Gasoline Powertrain System Design and Evaluation Using a Powertrain Starter Kit

2005-04-11
2005-01-0062
Prototyping of a complete powertrain controller is not generally permissible due to the large number of subsystems involved and the resources required in making the design a reality. The availability of a complete control system reference design at an early stage in the lifecycle can greatly enhance the quality of the system definition and allows early ideas to be prototyped in the application environment. This paper describes the implementation of such a reference design for a gasoline engine and gearbox management control system, integrated into robust housing which can be used for development in a prototype vehicle. The paper also outlines the powertrain subsystems involved, discusses how the system partitioning is achieved, shows the implementation of the partitioning into the physical hardware, and concludes with presenting the system benefits which can be realized.
Technical Paper

Sensor Signal Delivery

2005-04-11
2005-01-0043
The signal delivery and quality of sensor data is of growing importance for modern automotive control applications. Sensors tend to be calibrated subsystems that are designed to stay in a defined tolerance and thus can easily be modeled. Compared to this deterministic behavior the transmission channel is time variant due to EMC and aging of contacts for example. The use of analog signaling, which is the actual state of realization in many cases, is sensitive to the time variant effects mentioned before. This time variance is hard to consider for the control system development. In this paper we will analyze the role of the sensor in the signal supply chain and discuss approaches for digital sensor-ECU communication and their potential to establish a link, which allows neglecting low level effects of the channel.
Technical Paper

MultiCore Benefits & Challenges for Automotive Applications

2008-04-14
2008-01-0989
This paper will give an overview of multicore in automotive applications, covering the trends, benefits, challenges, and implementation scenarios. The automotive silicon industry has been building multicore and multiprocessor systems for a long time. The reasons for this choice have been: increased performance, safety redundancy, increased I/O & peripheral, access to multiple architectures (performance type e.g. DSP) and technologies. In the past, multiprocessors have been mainly considered as multi-die, multi-package with simple interconnection such as serial or parallel busses with possible shared memories. The new challenge is to implement a multicore, micro-processor that combines two or more independent processors into a single package, often a single integrated circuit (IC). The multicores allow a computing device to exhibit some form of thread-level parallelism (TLP).
Technical Paper

GPTA - A Flexible New Timer Approach for Automotive Applications

2000-03-06
2000-01-1240
Today's requirements for engine management controllers are increasing in various aspects. Stronger emission standards and diagnosis requirements demand more complex control algorithms, faster system response times, better usage of sensor information throughout the system and higher accuracy of actuator stimuli. Despite that, new solutions are needed to answer the requirement for higher cost effectiveness, flexibility and reusability. The trade-off between cost and functionality is constantly being reviewed when choosing the right microcontroller to operate with an ECU. Integration of more complex and flexible functionality into the microcontroller helps to reduce the need for custom ASICs and thus reduce the overall system cost. In order to reduce the demands on CPU throughput within the microcontroller, manufacturers have introduced smart peripherals that off-load some of the work of the CPU into the peripherals.
Technical Paper

AUDO Architecture A Solution to Automotive Micro-Controller Requirements

2000-03-06
2000-01-0145
The C166 family, based on a 16-bit core; it is nowadays an enormous success in automotive, in particular in PowerTrain. This component is the right answer for the automotive real time applications of today. It is with both, automotive customer requirements and a long automotive experience in semi-conductors that this new generation 32-bit family is borne. The objective of this document is to provide and comment on automotive requirements in terms of the new micro-controller, to show the benefits for the applications and explain how the AUDO architecture fulfils these requirements.
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