Advanced Techniques for Simulating ECU C-code on the PC

Over the last two decades, adoption of model-based techniques for the development of ECU software has resulted in major gains in productivity across the automotive industry. However, the fact remains that the majority of the ECU software today is still hand-written using the “C” programming language. Further, the need to shorten the development time, reduce costs and increase the quality of the ECU software has driven companies to adopt virtual (PC-based) simulation techniques rather than rely on expensive in-vehicle and dynamometer set-ups. This has lead to a situation where the two development philosophies (models and hand-written code) need to be properly integrated in order to fully capitalize on the advantages of PC-based techniques. For the complete ECU system to be simulated, typically, automatically generated C-code from other tools must be integrated as well. Since current tools do not support the integration of hand-written or automatically generated C-code very well, virtual PC-based simulations (e.g. software-in-the-loop) are very time consuming activities and are, therefore, not broadly introduced in the industry. INTECRIO (from ETAS) and INCODIO (from SYSTECS) offer a powerful, commercial platform for PC-based simulation of embedded software, eliminating the need for proprietary solutions.