Vehicle control systems-reliability through simplicity

Vehicle electronic control systems have the potential to become unreliable when they grow too complex. By careful design of the whole system, both hardware and software, it is possible to organise the data processing tasks in such a way that the risks associated with software failure are indeed minimal. The validation tools already in widespread use throughout the industry, when rigorously applied, reduce this risk to below that associated with hardware design failures. The paper concerns the programmable automotive microcontroller (PAM), an ASIC-based device developed by AB Automotive Electronics to improve reliability. It describes ways in which PAM can detect errors arising from various sources in software. AB has written, and maintains, its own compiler for PAM. The compiler gives warnings of possible sources of difficulty. Standards for software and the development thereof are given