In the new century the automotive industry is transforming
itself from an entirely mechanical industry to an industry that is
driven by electronics and services. The companies who will be most
successful are those who are able to control, drive and renew the
architectural concepts enabling the introduction of
state-of-the-art information technology to the car and its
supporting infrastructure.
This paper will first define the term architecture and will
elaborate about the increasing relevance of architectural thinking
in the automotive domain. Architectural leadership will be defined
to mean control (proprietary ownership of components and/or
interfaces), creation of a de-facto or legal standard as well as
renewal (creation of new products and markets utilizing new
linkages of existing architectures).
In the second part examples of successful and less successful
approaches for establishing architectural leadership in the
automotive industry are discussed. The authors will share their
experiences concerning the CAN, VAN, ABUS, J1850 multiplex busses,
the LIN local interconnect network, the OSEK/VDX operating system,
the TTP time triggered technology networking approach and the MOST
and AMI-Consortium for multimedia interface standards.