SPECIAL FEATURE AUTOMOTIVE ELECTRONICS
Model visualisation enables abstract automotive design
Coupling abstract design with automated schematic rendering provides the best of both worlds A
utomotive electronic design is undergoing a renaissance as vehicle
sophistication continues on its transformational path. Heavy electrical- mechanical engineering components have been replaced by microprocessor- based electronic systems. Self-driving, autonomous vehicles require computer- based artificial intelligence while adhering to the toughest safety standards devised. The modern vehicle contains a plethora
of electronic systems. Some of these are obvious, such as radar, entertainment, and navigation. However, most are hidden from the driver, but are integral to the vehicle’s basic operation. A vehicle in 2018 typically contains 100-300 microcontrollers or processors, 50+ complex electronic control units, between 5 and 20 million lines of software code, and miles of wire harness to connect them. This accelerated advancement is inevitably now driving dramatic changes in design paradigms. In semiconductor design of the 90s, one line of code or drawn component would depict a single logic gate. As HDL languages emerged, it was realised that a component such as a 100 gate adder or counter could also be described in a single line, and be much clearer to understand. The same is happening in automotive system level design solutions. High-level, abstract modelling systems are replacing traditional schematic capture. While the automotive semiconductors themselves are developed using Electronic Design Automation flows, with the addition of ISO 26262 regulated safety mechanisms, this level of modelling is now appearing in automotive sub-system design and across the entire vehicle. While this explosion of development descriptive power provides for huge productivity improvements, there is also a requirement for engineers to move away from optimised low-level design, relying on automation to produce circuit detail while they concentrate on system and functional level design. In the semiconductor HDL revolution, this shift actually proved very difficult of
engineers who were driven to provide the best circuit level design they could. Many engineers felt a loss of control over the detailed design and had trouble trusting the automated technologies. It was important to provide a visual path from the abstract model to the circuit, and this was accomplished by automatically producing a schematic of the detailed model. This allowed engineering groups to feel comfortable with the final result of their design work.
MODERN AUTOMOTIVE DESIGN The same is true of modern automotive design. As modelling levels become more abstract, engineers are going to want to see the result of their design work in a familiar setting, namely an engineering schematic. As we learned in semiconductor systems of the 90s, the automated tools will have to include mechanisms that display the final design implementation, and new technology is emerging, developed for the EDA industry, that provides rendered schematics based on model CAD databases. In fact, automated schematic rendering will be proven to be an essential technology to enable the migration from traditional schematic based design to higher abstraction design methodologies. However, an automated schematic rendering system, such as E-
Figure 1:
The modern vehicle contains a plethora of electronic systems
Engine provided by Concept Engineering, can provide additional benefits over and above manual schematic editing, and these can add significant functionality of the abstract modelling methodology. If functionality can be described at an abstract level and then converted, or “synthesised,” to a lower level, then the schematic rendering can be used to inspect the design, this allows for some of the benefits of a visual depiction, while still enabling the productivity improvement of abstraction. Such a system can generate specific schematics that allow the engineers to easily see and inspect design areas. Incremental schematics that reduce the clutter of unnecessary detail for the specific inspection, while highlighting useful data, can significantly accelerate the tasks being performed. The view can be modified and transformed as the engineer moves around the system, with information about the system actually displayed on the schematic, for example power usage, component information, and other detail, as shown in Figure 2. Also, the automated rendering system can extract all components from the model database that are associated with a certain vehicle function, such as “interior lighting” and, on the fly, create and display the complete schematic diagram for this specific function.
Figure 2:
Automatically rendered schematic diagram with
highlighted signal path
ABSTRACTION IN AUTOMOTIVE Abstraction is inevitable in automotive and aerospace design, driven by the rapid technological pace of the environment. As witnessed in the semiconductor industry, abstraction needs to be tempered with systems that make it easy for engineers to maintain their connection with the real electronics. This leads to a combined methodology where abstraction is used to describe functionality, while circuit visualisation allows for analysis, debug and smart servicing of the complete system.
Concept Engineering
http://www.concept.de e:
info@concept.de
32
JUNE 2018 | ELECTRONICS
/ ELECTRONICS
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