|
Keeping
the Motor of the European Economy in Good Condition
As a major consumer of embedded
systems and applications, Europe’s transport industry is
a prime mover in the design, development and commercialisation
of embedded systems and applications. As a cornerstone of the
European economy, the automotive sector consumes around 15 per
cent of all European-produced microprocessor systems, and ensures
the employment of more than 4 million people in Europe. Altogether,
some 8 million jobs in total depend on the fortunes of the transport
industry and related sectors - representing around 7 per cent
of the European Union’s Gross National Product (GNP). Success
in maintaining the economic well-being and competitive edge of
the transport industry is therefore vital to Europe’s prosperity.
ESPRIT domain 5 - Open Microprocessor
Systems Initiative (OMI) has been active in helping to maintain
the Transport industry’s economic well-being. This has been
achieved through support not only for innovative Research and
Technology Development (RTD) via collaborative industrial projects,
but also via several accompanying measures. An integral objective
has been to stimulate, promote and develop new business and project
relationships between Europe’s giant multinationals - with
their multi-skilled, multidisciplinary organisation, and Europe’s
giant repository of Small & Medium-size Enterprises (SMEs)
- with their niche expertise and distinctive competence.
Supporting
Innovation - Transporting Europe to Tomorrow
Flexibility, standards, communication
(in technical and human senses of the word), innovation, strong
market orientation - all these are watchwords which occur time
and time again in the objectives, approach and benefits realised
from OMI projects of any description. And nowhere are they possibly
more pertinent than in the Transport industry.
For the automotive industry,
producing in excess of 15M passenger cars alone a year, each
with anything from 8 to 48 embedded microprocessor systems, standards
(to reduce cost of implementation) and inter-processor communication
(to improve reliability & safety) are key attributes. For
the aerospace industry, even with much lower volumes of vehicles
(currently around 500 commercial aircraft and 100 satellites
a year), the business issues related to all these aspects are
equally as important.
With the collapse of military
markets, for example, European satellite manufacturers are under
immense pressure to reduce cost of on-board embedded systems,
reduce development costs - and yet remain technologically one
step ahead of the competition. With the loss of lucrative military
contracts to finance new developments, the technological and
cost leadership necessary to underpin commercial survival can
only occur if component volume is sufficient to drive down prices.
This itself leads to a situation of paradox. High volumes of
sales will financially induce suppliers to increase the rate
of obsolescence of devices. But this in turn drives end-users
to demand standardisation, so to avoid the entrapment that too
much technological advance too quickly can bring with it.
In its support of embedded
systems & applications RTD for Europe’s transport industry,
OMI can be judged as having succeeded in maintaining the equilibrium
between innovation and standardisation.
When is
an ECU not an ECU?
To choose but two illustrative
examples from the plethora of automotive industry projects supported
by OMI, consider firstly the CORE2000 project. The aim has been
to develop a cost-effective engine management system, optimised
to meet the Euro2000 regulations on permissible levels of exhaust
gas pollutants. This has resulted in the development of an innovative
microcontroller and associated interface software - allowing
your service garage to better diagnose and adjust the condition
of your engine so as to meet strict anti-pollution requirements
of the next millennium.
On the other hand, as embedded
car-borne electronic systems grow inexorably in both number and
complexity, the duplication of microcontroller(microprocessor)-based
resources (known as ECUs in the automotive industry - Electronic
Control Units) in different items of equipment can become costly
in Ecu (European Currency Unit) terms. Reducing complexity and
cost demands the use of networking technologies to place data
generated by any given ECU at the disposal of other ECUs in the
car.
European (non-transport) industry
has held a leading position since the 1980s in the field of networked,
numerically-controlled machines. OMI’s support of the automotive
industry’s uptake of the CAN (Controller Area Network) protocol
is exemplified by two projects. REJALNET has developed CAN interface
protocol
libraries to facilitate the cost-effective design of software
tools. And as a complement to this effort, MODISTARC has developed
conformance testing methodology to allow validation of such tools
in readiness for their commercial exploitation. In this way,
OMI aims to facilitate and reinforce the uptake of this IS0 data
communications standard by automotive industry embedded system
designers.
Ensuring
the Information Engine Runs Smoothly
Winning new market share, and
ensuring best chances of success in price-sensitive markets,
is underpinned by many of the standardisation initiatives supported
by OMI. These place a heavy emphasis on Accompanying Measures
which are specifically aimed at supporting communication and
awareness. Such marketing-oriented actions are additionally of
prime importance in promoting the wider uptake by industry of
the innovative RTD results from OMI-funded projects.
OMI’s own management office,
OMIMO, through its Web site and newsletter publications, has
been instrumental in ensuring that project results have been
able to reach as wide a readership as possible. And in harmony
with OMIMO is the User Group founded by OMI and specifically
targeted at support of the transport industry. Baptised by its
adherents as “SURGE-Transport”, this trans-industry
group is supported by more than 70 major multinationals and innovative
SMEs, embracing automotive, aerospace & rail vehicle manufacturers,
and their suppliers of embedded systems components.
Market research carried out
by the SURGE-Transport Group reveals that between 75 to 80 per
cent of all transport embedded systems OEMs (Original Equipment
Manufacturers) develop there own real-time micro component software
operating systems - often on a project-by-project basis. The
reuse of existing software is not a priority. And each new development
pushes further back any possibility of standardisation - that
is, of open, embedded microprocessor systems.
More perniciously, the demands
of the marketplace mean that opportunities to develop affordable,
custom architectures and software are under constant erosion.
This is exacerbated by an ever-shortening commercial lifetime
of applications, as well as by economic pressure to restrain
embedded system costs relative to overall vehicle cost. Available
time-to-market is shrinking continuously.
The SURGE-Transport Group in
particular represents an information engine specifically targeted
at the needs of Europe’s transport industry. Undertaking
market surveys on various needs - and ensuring knowledge of these
needs are widely disseminated - provides companies in any given
sector with a view on the needs of others. In so doing, this
presents prime opportunities to explore synergy and cooperation
in the quest for best-of-class technology and continual cost
reduction.
Reinforcing the ability of
European industry indigenous base of innovative expertise embodied
in SMEs and ensuring their fullest participation as valued Partners
to the success of collaborative projects, has likewise been an
important objective of OMI. This strategy has been expressed
through the business development forum activities of SURGE-Transport
and OMIMO, and the project consulting services offered by User
Support Node projects such as PrOMInent and eurOMIc. And the
prime importance of rapid return on investment to such companies
serves to underscore further the strong market orientation that
has been characteristic of the entire OMI programme.
Back to
the Future: Returning Benefits from Investments
The OMI programme was conceived
as a focussed cluster - aimed at fostering cross-sector and inter-industry
collaboration, capable of lasting far beyond the lifetime of
any given RTD project.
The success of such collaboration
has been and will continue to be fundamental to the ability of
all sectors of the European transport industry to invest in the
design, development, and commercial deployment of embedded systems
and applications.
Most importantly, the support
of OMI will have translated directly into the return of real
benefits to economic and natural environments, to companies and
their employees, and to the European citizens who ultimately
stand to profit most from the benefits conveyed by such collaboration.
0MI Bulletins are occasional
leaflets published by the OMI PROMISE project.
0MI,The Open Microprocessor systems Initiative, is a programme
set up by the European Information Technology industry and the
European Commission in the framework of Esprit the European strategic
Programme for Research and Development in Information Technology. |