Thesis chapter 2: Research motivation

Embedded software is becoming increasingly complex. Ebert & Jones show that the size and complexity of software in an embedded product increases exponentially over time. Numbers from Volvo Cars show a similar exponential evolution (seen in figure the figure below), not only for the infotainment software, which resembles mobile phone features, but also for "traditional" vehicle functionality.

Software in Mbytes downloaded in a vehicle at production at VCC over the years.

Ebert & Jones mention factors contributing to the complexity in their survey of the present state of embedded software development: ``combined software/hardware systems equipped with distributed software, computers, sensors, and actuators'' which points to the integration aspects of these systems. They list "high demands on availability, safety, information security, and interoperability" as typical quality attributes.

Ronkainen & Abrahamsson also emphasise that embedded systems are characterised by the concurrent co-design of hardware and software. They stress that the `"dynamics of co-design - i.e. the way it effects the concurrent software development processes, has to be understood in order to enable the use of agile software development methods."

Manhart & Schneider describe agile development of software in buses at Daimler-Chrysler. They mention for example that "equipment, functions, or parameter sets are implemented by integrating different proportions of third party- and OEM manufactured components" indicating supplier involvement. In their paper they also point out that software realises "complex electric or electronic functions", e.g. the integration between hardware and software.

The domain of large industrial development of mass-produced embedded systems can thus be defined by five characteristics:

• Deep integration between hardware and software for significant parts of the functionality 
• Strong focus on manufacturing aspects of the product during development (e.g. by project gates) 
• Strong supplier involvement providing a majority of the parts, and associated value, of the finished product 
• Some parts of the software and hardware realise safety-critical functionality 
• Long production life-time, sometimes spanning years for a single product model

These types of systems can be categorised as mass-produced embedded systems (MPES).

Broy states some challenges that automotive software is experiencing: "The high intensity of software in cars puts the car industry under stress and a high change pressure." He continues that the trend is not close to an end, and is driven by e.g: "High demand of new innovative or improved functionality'', "shorter time-to-market'' and "increased individualization".

In addition to these challenges the development of MPES exhibit some inherent problems for the R&D organisation, amplified by the present ecosystem of specialised suppliers and OEMs acting as system integrators:

• Heavy reliance on external developers and subcontractors complicates coordination through process because each of them use their own processes.
• Outsourcing of significant parts of development to suppliers causes expensive communication and coordination delays during integration. The cause of this is each issue found must be resolved through an OEM-supplier roundtrip with the OEM identifying the issue, discuss with the supplier(s) who resolves it, and the OEM re-integrating the "fixed" parts.
• The exponentially growing feature content severely complicates "big-bang" integration because used architectures requires all parts to be present for the system to work and therefore testable.

This research project started with the ambition to create opportunities provided by an R&D organisation in terms of new ways-of-working, new architectures, and possibly supporting new ecosystems. These opportunities could enable new business models for OEMs delivering mass-produced embedded systems, while at the same time mitigate some of the problems described above.

The choice of focusing on ways-of-working, architectures and ecosystems was done for three subjective reasons: In my experience it is easier to change these aspects than e.g. culture, knowledge management, or organizational structures. My engineering background made it easier for me to analyse and develop artefacts in these areas. This is a thesis in software engineering, and all these three areas are well within this field of research.

Geely owns Volvo Cars

Volvo Car Corporation is now fully owned by Geely. The deal was closed yesterday.
You can read the full story at Reuters or Gasgoo Auto News. New CEO will be Stefan Jacoby, formerly of VW North America.

Volvo is sold to Chinese Geely

Yes, I am aware that Volvo Car Corporation has been sold to Zhejiang Geely Holding Group. We, the employees, was informed by the newspapers, same as everyone else...

Read more about it from Gasgoo Autonews, Detroit News, Dagens Industri and Göteborgsposten (the latter two in Swedish).

Interviews with Volvo EESE managers

I got a link to a web clip with an interview with my manager Hans Alminger on automotive software modelling from the Electronica Automotive Conference 2008. A bit late, but anyway...

A very recent interview with Hans' (and therefore also my) boss Lennart Lundh can be read in the latest issue of Automotive Engineer on integrating functionality in fewer and bigger ECUs. It does not get hotter of the presses than this...

Two articles on Volvo electrical architecture

There are two articles that give an introduction to the electrical system of the first Volvo S80 (really the architecture to be precise). Even if that particular car is 10 years old the architecture in present Volvo vehicles are still of the same family, but two generations later.

• Volvo S80: Electrical system of the future by Kent Melin. This is an overview of some of the more important architectural decisions for the Volvo architecture.
• Volcano - a revolution in on-board communications by Lennart Casparsson et al. This describes the mathematics for Volvo's signal scheduling on CAN to ensure that all signals are received within their designated deadlines, and a brief description on the processes and tools to administrate the signal database.

Unfortunately neither article is available on-line where it was originally published, the Volvo Technology Report.

Narcissism

This blog post will contain some heavy narcissism on my part...

I wrote an article named Experience of introducing reference architectures in the development of automotive electronic systems together with some colleagues. I also gave an appreciated talk at the second international workshop on Software engineering for automotive systems, which was one of the workshops at the 27th International Conference on Software Engineering in St. Louis, MO, USA (ICSE 2005).

ICSE is one of the most prestigious conferences on software engineering (the most prestigious according to some rankings) so the paper should have some academic merit. But it is almost impossible to find my paper in any academic database. The paper is not included in INSPEC, which is the biggest general database about engineering and science, event though INSPEC has articles from ICSE 2005. It is not found in IEEE Explore. The only databases I could find it is in ACM portal, besides Google Scholar.
So it is unlikely my paper will be referenced since nobody knows it exists...

You can find a full-text version of my paper here, courtesy the Mälardalen Research and Technology Centre at Mälardalen University.

Note: INSPEC is not free to use, the other databases should allow you to search, but not download material unless you have a subscription. But Google scholar is usually very good at finding a PDF somewhere on the net if you have the title and author of an article.

Case study of the Architecture Business Cycle

I'm writing a paper with the working title "A Case Study of the Architecture Business Cycle for a Vehicle Software Architecture" together with a co-author.
We have tried to identify how the Architecture Business Cycle (ABC) looks like for the software architecture in a modern vehicle with software deployed to 30-70 electronic control units (ECUs) connected by a number of multiplexed buses, such as CAN, MOST and LIN.

The main results we present are the benefits the Electronic & Electric Systems Engineering (EESE) department at Volvo Car Corporation has gained from participating in identifying the ABC. Of course there are some benefits also from a research viewpoint as well, for example how well we thought the ABC model worked for such a case study.
The data comes from in-depth interviews performed with 20 persons working at the EESE department.