A Chip in the Old Block
Powerful networks of computers buried in the guts of cars and trucks are increasingly making life-critical decisions on the highway, although motorists hardly realize what’s going on behind the dashboard and under the hood.
Vehicle electronics are advancing so rapidly that cars have become among the most sophisticated electronic products on the consumer market, built with reliability levels and safety philosophies borrowed from jetliners and nuclear power plants.
Software is notoriously prone to breakdowns in offices and homes around the world, and nobody would knowingly trust their lives to a personal computer or cell phone, given their software glitches, disconnections and other balky behavior.
But with little fanfare, the automobile industry is aggressively pushing forward with an electronics architecture for vehicles that relies on dozens of microprocessors--distributed throughout the engine, transmission, suspension, braking system and body--that are more and more reliant on sophisticated software.
These systems make instantaneous decisions about when to apply brakes to enhance stability, deploy air bags in a crash, turn on windshield wipers in the rain and shut down fuel systems to prevent explosions.
At the same time, these microprocessors are being linked together in sophisticated data networks that allow seemingly unrelated parts of the car to communicate. The windows communicate with the vehicle’s security system. The anti-lock brakes communicate with the suspension system. The engine communicates with the transmission. And, of course, there are the global positioning satellite systems, Internet and cellular phone systems now on board many cars.
Mechanical engineers, long the authorities behind the design and development of cars, are increasingly sharing their domain with electrical engineers.
“You will see more and more of the chief engineers coming from the electrical area,” predicts UC Berkeley engineering professor J. Karl Hedrick, director of the California Partners for Advanced Transit and Highways (PATH) intelligent roadway program.
Car companies are experiencing a cultural revolution, and independent companies such as Delphi Automotive Systems, Visteon, Denso and Bosch are becoming critical suppliers of electronic technology to the car makers. Their role in automotive design is destined to grow dramatically.
“Many consumers don’t realize just how advanced the technology is, particularly the embedded control systems for the powertrain and the safety devices,” said John Sinelli, an engineer at Visteon, one of the auto industry’s major electronics suppliers. “Because it is not sitting on a desktop, people are not aware of it. But it is every bit as sophisticated as what goes into complex products like airplanes.”
Cars with advanced features, such as navigation systems, rain-sensitive wiper blades, side impact air bags and Internet connections, already are packed with about 80 microprocessors and control modules. The global auto industry accounts for $17 billion worth of semiconductor consumption annually. In the next four years, the value of semiconductor chips alone will leap 30% to $293 per vehicle, according to Motorola.
A home computer may be faster in raw computing power than the electronic system on a car, but a vehicle computer can perform tricks that no Apple or Dell product can.
When you turn on a home computer, you can drink half a cup of coffee by the time the operating system boots up and the Windows or Macintosh screen appears. The same sort of software initiation occurs in a vehicle engine and transmission module, but the boot-up is instantaneous. Turn the key and the engine is ready to go. If the operating system hits a glitch, it automatically reboots and keeps the car running. Try that with Windows.
“We have very difficult requirements,” said Scot Morrison, vice president and general manager of Wind River Automotive & Industrial products. “There is no ‘control-alt-delete’ for an anti-lock brake system. There is much more stringent testing and development for an automotive product. The industry wants very, very reliable operating systems.”
Wind River, a Silicon Valley software firm, provided the software for the Mars Pathfinder and is a key supplier of operating systems for 16-bit and 32-bit computer chips used in vehicle control modules. (The most capable microprocessors for desktop computers use 32-bit chips.)
Engineers are also relying on data networks to reduce the complexity and weight of automotive wiring harnesses. A typical car has about a mile and a half of copper wire, said Bob Steele, senior staff research engineer at Packard Electric, a unit of Delphi Automotive.
Until about a decade ago, every device was hard-wired. So if you flipped a switch on the dashboard to turn a mirror, a wire had to run from the switch to the mirror. But today, switches are connected to controller chips that send digital messages to control modules.
“Everything electrical will be a node with a controller on it,” Steele said.”
To avoid software and hardware glitches, the auto industry is building in redundancy of the type the aircraft and nuclear power industry has long used. The need for redundancy will grow dramatically as more and more devices become computer controlled.
Over the next decade, for example, there will be steer-by-wire systems that will make the steering wheel merely a big switch sending signals to electric motors that turn the wheels. No more mechanical linkage. The same with brakes, eliminating the hydraulic system. Water pumps, power-steering pumps, engine valves and air-conditioning compressors will be electrically powered.
An electrical outage would be potentially catastrophic, so cars will have two batteries, both operating at 42 volts to provide more juice than the current 14 volts for the electrical system.
A lot of things seem topsy-turvy in the world of automotive electronics. Giants like Intel and Microsoft are minor players. Motorola is the dominant chip supplier, and its 32-bit Power PC chip is a major player in engine and transmission control modules.
As cars have grown in electronic sophistication, engineers have debated whether the day will come when one central computer controls everything on a vehicle. Technical and business forces in the auto industry are aligned against that, because there is so much benefit to controlling subsystems individually.
But the day is fast coming when a central computer is likely to coordinate all of the on-board functions of processors distributed around the vehicle.
“You need local intelligence, but you gain something in central processing,” says Pete Schulmeyer, director of strategic marketing for Motorola’s transportation division in Austin, Texas. “Another layer of intelligence above local control is the next generation.”
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Ralph Vartabedian cannot answer mail personally but responds in this column to automotive questions of general interest. Please do not telephone. Write to Your Wheels, Business Section, Los Angeles Times, 202 W. 1st St., Los Angeles, CA 90012. E-mail: ralph.vartabedian@latimes.com.
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* Next Week: The potential downside of vehicle computerization--bugs in the electronics, software glitches and privacy breaches.
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Computer On Wheels
The conversion of key automobile systems from mechanical and hydraulic power to electrical will accelerate computerization on future cars. Each system, such as electrical steering and electrical water pumps, will require more sophisticated microprocessors, operating software and data networks. An electrically operated braking system, for example, will need to share a data network that connects the brake pedal, the wheels, the suspension and the engine, among other systems. Cars already are among the most sophisticated electronic products on the consumer market.
Source: Motorola
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The Chips Are Up
The use of semiconductors in new cars and trucks is expected to jump substantially in coming years as more and more computer-controled systems are introduced to the industry. The value of the average automobile’s semiconductor content is expected to hit $293 by 2005, almost double what it was a decade earlier.
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Value of semiconductors, per vehicle
2005: $293.08
