Harmonizing Automotive Design: Making Electronics and Mechanical Component Development Compliment Each Other

Kevin Baughey, Director, ENOVIA Automotive Industry Solutions, Dassault Systèmes
Rick Stanton, Director, Global Semiconductor and High-Tech Industry Solutions Strategy, Dassault Systèmes

Gone are the days when creating an automobile involved nothing but grease, grit and roaring engines.

Smart safety systems, parking sensors, tire pressure monitors and MP3 integration have become common, expected features, and the need for embedded electronics and software systems in automobiles is growing. In fact, electronics and software systems account for almost 35 percent of the production cost of an average car—not even taking into account their ubiquity within the luxury market. In the past, electronics and software were often considered a secondary priority to the rest of the vehicle, but as the key driver of future functions and features, they can no longer be thought of as such.

With the current state of the global economy, auto companies and organizations involved in the automotive supply chain are being forced to cut costs, improve efficiency and show that they can still provide strong value to customers to survive. Therefore, ensuring that development lead times and lifecycles are coordinated from chip to chassis is of the upmost importance. With almost 52 percent of automotive recalls due to electrical system failures, automakers need to be more focused than ever on getting these right at the development and manufacturing stage.

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New Benchmarks for Communications Processors

William McDonald, Director, CPE and Optical Product Marketing, TranSwitch Corporation

Currently deployed broadband access gateways usually support an ADSL2/2+ wide area network (WAN) interface, multiple Fast Ethernet local area network (LAN) interfaces and Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 802.11a/b/g Wi-Fi. Typical maximum data rates for an ADSL2/2+ line are 24Mbps downstream and 1.4Mbps upstream. IEEE 802.11a/b/g Wi-Fi typically supports a maximum raw data rate of 54Mbps or about 19Mbps net throughput. As a result, these gateways are optimized for sub-100Mbps data throughput performance.

With the advent of higher bandwidth broadband access technologies, such as very high-speed digital subscriber line (VDSL), passive optical network (PON), IEEE 802.11n Wi-Fi and 3G/4G wireless, and the rollout of triple- and quad-play services, end-user demand for bandwidth has increased markedly, from tens to hundreds of megabits. This increase in demand for bandwidth has spurred the industry to introduce a new generation of communications processors that support packet processing at gigabit rates. This article identifies the features that these processors must support to meet these new bandwidth demands, while simultaneously complying with seemingly conflicting requirements for reduced power consumption and bill of materials (BOM) cost.

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