AUTOSAR

AUTOSAR (AUTomotive Open System ARchitecture) is an open and standardized automotive software architecture, jointly developed by automobile manufacturers, suppliers and tool developers. It is a partnership of automotive OEMs, suppliers and tool vendors whose objective is to create and establish open standards for automotive E/E (Electrics/Electronics) architectures that will provide a basic infrastructure to assist with developing vehicular software, user interfaces and management for all application domains. This includes the standardization of basic systems functions, scalability to different vehicle and platform variants, transferability throughout the network, integration from multiple suppliers, maintainability throughout the entire product lifecycle and software updates and upgrades over the vehicle's lifetime as some of the key goals.

AUTOSAR MOTIVE

* paves the way for innovative electronic systems that further improve performance, safety and environmental friendliness
* is a strong global partnership that creates one common standard: "Cooperate on standards, compete on implementation"
* is a key enabling technology to manage the growing electrics/electronics complexity. It aims to be prepared for the upcoming technologies and to improve cost-efficiency without making any compromise with respect to quality
* facilitates the exchange and update of software and hardware over the service life of the vehicle

AUTOSAR follows the layered architecture concept. The total software solution is divided into 3 layers, known as Application software, Runtime Environment (RTE) and Basic Software (BSW). All the functionalities are kept under the application software module, the Run Time Environment acts as a virtual function bus for an Electronic control unit and messages are transferred using the basic software.

There are three type of membership for AUTOSAR

Core members include the PSA Peugeot Citroën, Toyota Motor Corporation, Volkswagen, BMW Group, Daimler AG, Ford Motor Company, General Motors, Opel, and automotive suppliers Bosch, Continental and Siemens VDO (now Continental VDO).

There are a total of 35 corporate members as of September 2005.

The professed goals are modularity, scalability, transferability and re-usability of functions to provide a standardized platform for automotive systems. This will enable system wide configuration and optimization to meet runtime requirements of automotive devices. AUTOSAR plans to complete standards for software interfaces by August, 2006. Many of the low-level components of AUTOSAR (the real time operating system and communications layer) are derived from OSEK work.

NEWS AND RELEASES

Currently (as of August 2008), the specifications are up to version 3.0. This version introduces some significant changes from the previous version 2.1, as well as some minor tweaks. Version 3.1 is due out very soon. It is expected that this will be mostly review comments on 3.0. Version 4.0 is expected in 2009.

External links

* [http://www.autosar.org Official Website]
* [http://www.dyscas.org Dynamically Self Configuring Automotive System]