Building Bridges – Standardized Data Interchange in the ECU Development Process

The challenges in developing electronics systems for vehicles are greater than ever. Standards such as those of ASAM e.V. or the AUTOSAR initiative help to create a reliable basis for everyone involved in the development process. Among other things, there is an increasing need for system models and description formats that will cover all the aspects of an electronic control unit (ECU) or of an ECU network. While definition work on such formats is still going on, development tools that can process them are also becoming established, for example, the SystemDesk architecture design tool from dSPACE.
The present paper focuses on the question of what role these architecture-oriented tools play in the development process – for example, how they interact with tools for creating function models and how they integrate into version control systems.