IBM announced today that it has become the newest member of the Automotive Open Systems Architecture (AUTOSAR) consortium. AUTOSAR is a partnership of key players in the automotive, electronics and software industries dedicated to managing the complexities of rapidly increasing electronics and software technology in vehicles through the creation and adoption of globally recognized, open-standards-based platforms.
The announcement comes just weeks after IBM launched its Embedded Systems Lifecycle Management (ESLM) business initiative, which delivers a cohesive and comprehensive set of business and engineering consulting services, development and integration services, architectural frameworks and engineering tools for the entire vehicle systems and software lifecycle. ESLM is precisely aligned with AUTOSAR’s goals: to leverage member cooperation for the creation of open platforms that will standardize central architectural elements throughout the auto industry and its supply chain. Such standardization will generate not only a dramatic improvement in worldwide vehicle quality, but also a new level of industry competition that is focused squarely on what matters most: issues of implementation.
Key members of AUTOSAR besides IBM include BMW, Volkswagen, DaimlerChrysler, Bosch, Siemens and Continental Tevis among dozens of other international firms. Founded in 2002, AUTOSAR was formally launched in July 2003.
The growth of AUTOSAR has been spurred by the acceleration of technology in IT enablement and in-vehicle systems, which will continue to expand over the next 10 years. With that acceleration will continue to come enormous complexity and challenge:
– Today’s automotive electronic development processes are difficult to manage, since embedded systems involve hardware, software, and electrical systems
– The interrelationships between hardware, software, and electrical systems in a single vehicle model cause unprecedented complexity
– Complex systems of smart devices are difficult and time-consuming to develop and expensive to recall – but are required to meet and drive new demand
– The lack of automotive embedded-systems standards for architecture and software makes it difficult for automotive suppliers and OEM’s to efficiently handle the increasingly complex engineering workload
– Compared to when the vehicle was primarily a mechanical system (making development and failure prediction much simpler tasks), today’s cars and trucks are increasingly becoming electronics systems.
In this new environment, the digital and electronics world also brings with it new options for behavioral modeling, auto-code generation, simulation and testing as well as software asset reuse; it presents enormous opportunities to the automotive engineering community in terms of facilitating innovation and speeding embedded systems development.
To address both challenges and the opportunities, automotive suppliers today invest in research and development (R&D) at double-digit percentage levels. By 2015, embedded systems are expected to account for 60 percent of automotive research and development (R&D) costs alone – not including production costs. Both IBM and AUTOSAR are dedicated to ensuring improved returns on all such investments.
“With a world that grows increasingly dependent on the functions supplied by embedded software, it’s a fact that embedded software development and management is immature as compared to other engineering disciplines,” said Janette Beauchamp, General Manager, IBM Global Automotive Industry. “In joining AUTOSAR, we see significant opportunity to share our thought leadership, experience, processes and frameworks to address the growing complexity in embedded and distributed computing systems in vehicles with some of the finest players in the automotive, electronics and software industries – and do so in an environment that so strongly supports open standards around the world.”
IBM will join AUTOSAR as a Premium Member. In that capacity, IBM will both participate in and act as a leader for select working groups, such as those focusing on process, methods, architectures, standards, configuration management and transformation. The company will also make ongoing technical contributions and, in return, share in the full pool of information contributed by other members of the consortium. IBM’s clients will benefit from the new association as AUTOSAR embraces accelerated movement to high-performance devices and computing, the use of common building blocks for vehicle development, and the simultaneous reuse and protection of intellectual property.
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