Agilent Technologies and Mentor Graphics have formed a strategic partnership in which Agilent will license some of Mentor Graphics’ Volcano products for automotive applications.
Agilent also introduced two products, the LIN tester, derived from Mentor's Volcano LIN Spector product, and the 500 series vehicle protocol tester (VPT501), derived from Mentor's Volcano TELLUS.
Roland Jeutter, automotive business manager at Agilent Technologies Germany, said the partnership will enable Agilent to provide more complete solutions for automotive customers. The company now provides test and validation tools beyond the physical layer up to the protocol layer, addressing the increasing complexity of vehicle network topology and the needs for higher network bandwidth and greater reliability.
Mentor Graphics’ workflow allows engineers to design a vehicle network by capturing and validating high-level requirements in the early design phase, after which the communication matrix is generated automatically. Customers using Mentor Graphics’ vehicle network design tools with Agilent testers will be able to verify complex signal chains and network/signal timings.
Joachim Langenwalter, director of the Automotive Networking Business Unit at Mentor Graphics Germany, said his company's vehicle protocol analysis and node emulation products complement Agilent’s physical layer test tools. “Our partnership with Agilent allows us to focus on our core competencies, the network and electronic design tool and embedded software for AUTOSAR and beyond,” he said.
The Agilent LIN tester is an analysis and emulation tool used for the testing and validation of LIN communication systems. The LIN 2.0-compliant system supports 12 V and 24 V designs and provides full master/slave capabilities for one or more nodes, as well as a LIN Go editor to handle graphical objects.
The Agilent 500 series vehicle protocol tester facilitates network timing checks and signal chain analysis across multiple networks and physical I/Os, and also enables stand-alone data logging. It includes two CAN and two LIN interfaces plus eight digital I/Os and a 100Mbps Ethernet link to a PC.