Nissan, Alpine Discuss Car Electronics Trends

Tag : Computer And Electronics

Nikkei Microdevices hosts a conference every spring for developers of system-on-chip(SoC), system-in-package (SiP), etc, called the SoC/SiP Developers'Conference. The main theme of the 2008 conference, held April24-25, was automotive ICs, with keynote speeches on the subjectgiven by representatives from firms offering various points ofview. Summaries of the speeches given by two of those firms -automobile manufacturer Nissan Motor Co Ltd of Japan, andautomotive electronics (car navigation system) manufacturer AlpineElectronics Inc of Japan - are given below. Computer Simulations
Atsushi Shizuta, senior vice president, Nissan PV ProductDevelopment Division No.2 of Nissan Motor discussed recentautomobile development techniques. Computer simulation plays a keypart in both mechanical design and electrical/electronics design,reducing the number of prototypes fabricated and cuttingdevelopment time. He revealed that in 1995 it took 29.5 months todevelop an automobile (from design completion to volume productionstart), but by 2005 to 2007 this time had been cut to as little at10.5 months, assuming shared body platform and power train. Evenwith a newly developed body platform and power train, he said,minimum development time was still only 17 months.
The company achieved these results by improving its developmentapproach, dubbed Value UP Innovation of Product, Process, Program(V-3P). V-3P utilizes computer simulation as much as possible indesign, test and prototyping, eliminating the need to verifyresults in prototype vehicles.
Through the use of V-3P, overall design quality has also risen,such as cutting the number of necessary design changes to abouthalf the number required by conventional design methodology. Forelectronics, the number of required design changes has been cut toa quarter. Next-Gen Systems
Hitoki Matsuda, assistant senior manager, AVNC PF Engineering Deptat Alpine Electronics discussed the history and future of carnavigation systems, and the SoCs that make them possible. Heexplained that car navigation systems have evolved as independentautomotive electronic systems until now, beginning with simplenavigation functions and gradually evolving to include audio andother functions. They are no longer primarily car navigationsystems, he said; they are now positioned as automotive systems(computers) with graphical user interface (GUI) displays, providinga range of functions implemented via software. The car navigationfunctions are also implemented as one of the many softwarecapabilities.
He introduced two examples as evidence of this trend. The first wasthe personal navigation device (PND), a simple navigational system.The PND uses standard hardware (developed and supplied bymanufacturers in Taiwan and elsewhere) and Windows Mobile to runnavigation software. In other words, the equipment (hardware) isentirely separate from the navigation software. The second examplewas the iPod, which faces strong demand from users for connectionto multi-function car navigation systems. In this case, audiostreams from the iPod are played through the car navigation audiosystem, marking an end to the era where "... everything is provideddirectly by the car navigation system."
Matsuda also presented an outline of the next generation ofautomotive electronic equipment, explaining it would run a Windowsoperating system (OS) and a host of software applications, butwould require a separate implementation for functions demandingreal-time operation. Considering that multiple applications wouldhave to run using multiple implementations, he said, SoCs innext-gen automotive systems will probably integrate multipleprocessor cores.