Embedded Software And System Level Design

Reading the news about the Prius recall and speculation that embedded software might perhaps be a cause of the problems, is a rather compelling reminder of the growing proportion of electronic content in an average automobile today. Consider too the corresponding growth in the lines of code to manage those components.

In 2004, it was estimated that an average car had 40+ ECUs. An IEEE article last year estimated that a premium car had approximately 70 to 100 ECUs controlling several systems from the radio and navigation to more critical functions such as braking and airbag deployment. Lines of software code are estimated to be in the many millions.

As software becomes an increasingly bigger component of the device as compared with the hardware how do you validate, verify and test to ensure that system works as it is supposed to? Walls between software and hardware development were supposed to come down years ago with increased integration of development cycles and more testing at each stage of prototype development. The truth though seems to be that the walls are still very much in place and true system level design is still years away.