The Company
Delphi Corporation is a leading global supplier of electronics and technologies for automotive, commercial vehicle and other market segments. Operating major technical centers, manufacturing sites and customer support facilities in 30 countries, Delphi delivers real-world innovations that make products smarter and safer as well as more powerful and efficient.
The Challenge
A leading European OEM hired Delphi to deliver the engine controller for a 2.0 liter diesel motor for production vehicles. Premise for this project was to have a hybrid application, i.e. using as much existing application software as possible but also to replacing progressively existing functions with new Autosar software components provided by the car manufacturer. Delphi used the existing Delphi Diesel-specific basic software for this project.
The Solution
A significant goal of the AUTOSAR standard is to share software components across applications and hardware platforms. Delphi thus decided to implement a dual face system: one compliant with the AUTOSAR Implementation Conformance Class 1 (ICC 1), the second face being compliant with the remaining part of software (non AUTOSAR). The communication between both worlds takes place through a specific interface software component.
To implement the AUTOSAR virtual functional bus (VFB), Delphi used the Run-Time Environment (RTE) developed by EB.
A basic software interface extends the existing Delphi Diesel-specific basic software to be compliant to AUTOSAR and allow connection with RTE. The basic software and the operating system itself, however, were not changed, and thus did not comply with the AUTOSAR standard.
Delphi decided to use EB's RTE generator. Immediately after EBīs RTE generator was introduced to the market, EB delivered the first version to Delphi.
The AUTOSAR specification 2.0 on which this RTE is based had been finalized by the AUTOSAR consortium just three months earlier. Implementing the new specification at such speed was only possible because EB had already developed a preliminary version of the RTE in advance, based on a preliminary version of the AUTOSAR specification.
EB was thus one of the first software companies able to offer a complete AUTOSAR 2.0-compliant RTE generator and to use it in mass-production vehicles.
Immediately after the delivery of the RTE Generator, EB's specialists then supported the Delphi project personally on-site in Blois, France, with a two-day training session and introductory workshop.
The Benefit
In the months that followed, EB experts supported the project team continuously. These were the same experts who had also developed the RTE generator at EB.
Delphi thus had competent contacts who responded fast and who could solve any problems they encountered. The EB experts also addressed specific change requests by Delphi.
Delphi also had some practical suggestions and improvements for the further development of the RTE generator, making the cooperation mutually beneficial.
As a result of this close cooperation, Delphi was able to deliver an AUTOSAR-compliant controller shortly after publication of the AUTOSAR specifications.
The car manufacturer and Delphi can now reuse software components in later projects regardless of the basic software, without modifications.