Hybrid Vehicle Control Systems Fast Forward with Advances in Silicon Technology

The traditional automotive electrical system has been part of a modern luxury vehicle ever since Henry Ford's wife watched her friend start the car with the push of a button. The voltage of the electrical system started out in the early 1900's at 6 volt. It was upgraded and standardized on 12 volts to supply enough power to the luxury and system needs of the day. Today, that 12 volt system is being strained by safety features, luxury add-ins and demands from new engine electronics to provide greater efficiencies and dramatic reductions in emissions. Hybrid electric vehicles (HEV) will demand drive the voltage requirements to exceed 250 volts in many of the powertrain systems. The advances in diesel and gasoline engines will demand additional electronics and high power circuits to open valves, actuators and drive pumps. The emissions will require additional and in some cases new sensors to accurately control the engine.

More efficient internal combustion engines (ICE) are being perfected that will burn more cleanly and provide improved fuel efficiencies. The hybrid powertrain bring the most advanced features together through new electronic technologies. New embedded processor features are being implemented to address the requirements of new powertrain systems. The recent inclusion of features like a direct memory access (DMA), on-chip data and instruction caches, multi-processor real time debugging interfaces and single-instruction-multiple-data (SIMD) mathematical unit are designed to bring system function and performance to a new level of capability. Getting the performance out of the embedded processor requires a general understanding of the embedded processor architecture and a detailed knowledge of the powertrain system.