Software toolkit protects against unpleasant surprises with real-time functions
Real-time software vendor Inchron AG has unveiled a new version of its timing optimisation tool. Consisting of three core tools chronSIM, chronVIEW and chronVAL, the chronSUITE 3 provides automotive software development teams with analysis capabilities they need to design and test software for the next generation of automotive systems. By giving timing the same importance as functional behaviour, OEMs and suppliers can more efficiently manage the transition to high-performance computing (HPC), central electronic control units (ECUs) and cross-domain computing. chronSUITE 3 further ensures that ECU development is not delayed by sporadic, hard-to-find bugs that typically occur during system integration.
“In the near future, software will account for 90% of innovations in cars,” explains Ralf Münzenberger, CEO and co-founder of Inchron AG. “The automotive industry is focused on closing the productivity gap in ECU development. In doing so, it is essential to identify and eliminate timing and performance issues at an early stage, ideally already during the design of the architecture. chronSUITE 3 enables teams to successfully manage the growing complexity of dynamic software architectures.”
Dynamic software architectures must provide enough reserve so that new ECU functions, realised through software, can be integrated on existing hardware platforms or as over-the-air software updates. With the tools in chronSUITE, formerly called Tool-Suite, system and software architects can determine whether sufficient load reserves are available for additional or changed functions and what effects may occur on existing functions. With the shift to heterogeneous multicore processors already underway, chronSUITE can show the impact of new or changed software modules, regardless of which core or hardware accelerator they are assigned to, taking into account memory bus utilisation.
Once the timing requirements are determined, they are on an equal footing with the functional requirements for the ECU. chronSUITE accompanies projects throughout the entire development process. Thus, software developers, integrators and testers can be sure that timing and not only functional requirements are met. Customer projects have shown that this means that unforeseen, sporadic problems rarely occur during system testing. If they do occur, they can be eliminated much more efficiently with this methodology, the provider claims.
New in the current software release is:
- Support for simulation of system-on-chip (SoC) with heterogeneous hardware architectures, memory bus overloads and multi-threaded applications.
- Significantly expanded modelling options regarding execution behaviour, queue communication and signal routing of chains of effects.
- Importer for common modelling types (APP4MC AMALTHEA).
- Improved visualisation of chains of effects, statistical analyses and histograms.
Customers upgrading to chronSUITE 3 can maintain their established development flow while benefiting from next-generation simulation and timing analysis capabilities, the vendor touts. “When teams with experience from different automotive domains try to integrate their functions on a single, heterogeneous SoC, the different architectural concepts often come into conflict,” explains Inchron co-founder and CTO Matthias Dörfel. “Inchron’s tools ensure that approaches can be modelled and analysed before software development, avoiding timing issues that typically delay project completion.”
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