Exerting greater control

Controller architectures shift and add functionality as overall usage grows.

The new features being added to vehicles are altering the way engineers use rapidly changing electronic components, shifting from 8- to 16- and 32-bit chips and adopting a growing number of digital signal processors (DSPs). As their performance grows, these chips are also offering more communication functionality, handling more networking and data sharing.

Engineers are constantly changing the types of chips used in various applications to boost speed or trim expenses. But despite the ongoing shifts, the growth of electronic functions continues to accelerate enough so that no architecture is seeing less usage.