Fujitsu Microelectronics Asia Pte Ltd (FMAL) has developed and launched a new microcontroller driver for its MB91460 Series of high-performance 32-bit automotive microcontrollers.
Jointly developed with Elektrobit Corporation of Finland, the new driver is compatible with Release 2.1 of AUTOSAR, the open software architecture for automobiles from the AUTOSAR automotive software standards consortium.
The new microcontroller driver is now available from Fujitsu Microelectronics and Elektrobit. When used with Fujitsu Microelectronics’ microcontrollers, this new driver will offer customers a greater degree of code reusability for automotive onboard applications already developed, and greater efficiency when developing automotive software.
As electronic control technology becomes more pervasive and the number of electronic components increase, the software that controls these components is becoming more complex and larger, leading to mounting costs for manufacturers of vehicles and electronic control units (ECUs).
AUTOSAR is a standards consortium for automotive onboard systems software, dedicated to addressing this problem - by creating a common specification for onboard software, the same software can be re-used regardless of the microcontroller it is running on. The AUTOSAR Release 2.1 specification standard was recently published and encompasses FlexRay (*2), the next-generation in-vehicle networking standard.
Fujitsu Microelectronics became a premium member of the AUTOSAR organization in 2005 and has taken an active role in the development of onboard microcontrollers. In 2007, the company formed a strategic partnership with Elektrobit, a leading developer of software for automotive onboard systems. The companies worked together to develop a version of Elektrobit’s “EB tresos” software for Fujitsu Microelectronics’ MB91460 Series of microcontrollers, with both companies agreeing to distribute an AUTOSAR-compatible driver.
In accordance with this agreement, Fujitsu Microelectronics and Elektrobit jointly developed two drivers compatible with AUTOSAR 2.1: one for the dashboard-control microcontroller MB91F467DA, and one for the FlexRay 2.1 microcontroller, MB91F465XA. Both drivers are currently available. The AUTOSAR Release 2.1 now encompasses FlexRay, so customers using Fujitsu Microelectronics’ microcontrollers and the new driver developed with Elektrobit can efficiently develop applications that take advantage of FlexRay.
