Reduction of electronic control units in electric vehicles using multicore technology

Abstract

In the automotive domain the permanent increase in functionality led to a vast number of electronic control units (ECUs) in todays cars, but packaging and energy consumption became problematic in the last years. Thus it is vital to integrate more functions per ECU and shift in-car-networking complexity into software. To master this challenge, it is inevitable to use multicore ECUs, which provide more computation power with less energy consumption. We show how the automotive domain can benefit from multicore technology and how the software development model has to be addapted to master the newly introduced challenges. © 2012 Springer-Verlag.