Standards lay foundations for innovation

Automotive Industries, Spring, 2008 by Lenny Case

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Industry standards like AUTOSAR lay the foundation for innovation, according to Martin Schleicher, Director Products and Platforms of the Electrobit Corporation (EB) Automotive Software Business Unit.

EB specializes in embedded software and hardware solutions for the wireless and automotive industries. Nearly 37% of its 144 million Euro revenues come from the automotive segment, with wireless communication solutions accounting for 63%.

Automotive Industries (AI) spoke to Martin Schleicher, Director, Products and Platforms.

AI: Tell us about EB's AUTOSAR standard automotive software.

Schleicher: In 2006, EB was the first company to offer the full AUTOSAR Basic Software package. Through the acquisition of DECOMSYS in 2007, we can now offer with the EB tresos product family a full solution for AUTOSAR and FlexRay covering the whole V-cycle. At the same time, EB tresos is supporting customers in saving their investments into existing ECU systems based on OSEK and CAN with an easy and smooth migration to the new advanced architectures using AUTOSAR or FlexRay.

AI: What is the impact of the FME and EB solutions based on AUTOSAR?

Schleicher: Through direct cooperation with semiconductor vendors, we can offer a complete and optimized AUTOSAR package for microcontrollers consisting of the Basic Software and the Microcontroller Abstraction Layer (MCAL). This enables our customers to select the microcontrollers which best fit their needs and at the same time, reduce the development and integration effort.

AI: How is the company planning to expand in other parts of the world from your European base?

Schleicher: We see huge opportunities in expanding our automotive business globally to Asia and the US. For instance, for the JASPAR consortium, EB is the leading supplier for AUTOSAR. In the US, we already have operations in Seattle and Detroit that we plan to grow strongly. In April 2008, EB hosted the first North American AUTOSAR Symposium that turned out to be a huge success.

AI: How does your AUTOSAR-compliant family of software solutions, the EB tresos, compares to similar products in the market?

Schleicher: EB tresos is an integrated environment for ECU software development consisting of tools for network design, con figuration, and generation of AUTOSAR Basic Software and measuring and analysis tools for CAN, LIN, and FlexRay as well as cluster simulation. Our solutions provide maximum flexibility for our customers through a seamless and comprehensive software infrastructure with open interfaces. Only perfect teamwork between individual tools guarantees successful networking of ECU software standards. Within one development environment, you can design, develop, analyze and test ECU software. This keeps frictional losses at bay, costs under control, and errors to a minimum.

AI: Tell us about your solutions that support Microsoft embedded technologies.

Schleicher: EB has a long track-record in the Infotainment and telematics domain. Our HMI Development tool EB GUIDE supports Microsoft Windows CE and MS Auto as target platforms. Our navigation software, EB Street Director, is available for a large variety of Portable Navigation Devices (PND) from different vendors running Windows CE as well as for built-in systems with MS Auto. In 2007, we shipped more than one million licenses of our navigation software on PNDs with Windows CE. The very successful FIAT Blue&Me system based on MS Auto is also using the EB street director core for its navigation solution.

AI: What automotive experience does EB have?

Schleicher: EB has been delivering software solutions to the automotive industry for over 20 years--worldwide. The list of our customers includes all major car manufacturers and suppliers. With EB software solutions, our customers are able to redefine their automotive electronics, speed up the entire development process, minimize efforts to upgrade existing functions, or develop new ones. EB software provides a stable foundation for all automotive electronics.