IDE, RTOS Are Integrated To Aid Auto ECU Designers

Developers of automotive electronic control unit (ECU) software can now reduce development time, produce code with fewer bugs, and lower production costs by using Green Hills Software's MULTI integrated development environment (IDE) in conjunction with the RTA-OSEK real-time operating system from LiveDevices Ltd. The two companies have worked together to integrate the IDE and RTOS.

The MULTI IDE provides debugging, editing, configuration management, code browsing, and other tools for ECU development. MULTI's optimizing C, C++, and EC++ compilers generate fast and small code for 32-bit processors like the Freescale MPC555x. In addition, MULTI fully conforms to ANSI/ISO C and C++ implementations. To help developers detect bugs early in the development process, MULTI provides an easy-to-use interface that automates rule-checking and team-wide enforcement of the MISRA-C:1998 and MISRA-C:2004 safe coding rules.

RTA-OSEK provides a production RTOS suitable for applications in all areas of automotive ECU design. It implements the AUTOSAR-OS V1.0 (SC-1) and OSEK/VDX OS V2.2.3 standard and is fully MISRA compliant. A very small and fast runtime kernel is supplied for more than 20 popular microcontrollers. The low overhead and advanced timing-control features of RTA-OSEK are well-suited for power train and chassis electronics applications.