Dependable Computing a Necessity in the Automotive Industry

Yinong Chen
Programme for Highly Dependable Systems
University of the Witwatersrand


Computer technology has emerged as important to all industry sectors. The 
automotive industry is not an exception. Today, 20% to 30% of the value of a 
top range car comes from its on-board electronics, including a number of 
networked high performance processors, several megabytes of program code and 
relevant circuits that interface on-board computers to sensors and actuators. 
More electronics are being introduced in the next generation of cars. This 
was revealed in the 35th meeting of the IFIP (International Federation for 
Information Processing) Working Group 10.4, held in Oahu from 10th - 15th 
January 1999.

The IFIP WG 10.4 on Dependable Computing and Fault Tolerance was established 
by the IFIP General Assembly in October 1980. IFIP WG 10.4 members meet twice 
a year. The main goals of the meetings are to conduct in-depth discussions of 
important technical topics in dependable computing, to identify important 
research directions, and to coordinate research and international conferences 
in this area.

At its 35th meeting, "dependability in automotive electronics" was the theme. 
Designers from automotive electronics manufacturers were invited to report 
their latest designs and to discuss their problems related to the dependability 
issues of their on-board computers with the experts in IFIP WG 10.4. Designers 
invited to report in this meeting were from Honda Japan, Mercedes-Chrysler 
Germany, Nissan Japan, Toyota Japan, Volvo Sweden, Honeywell USA, Motorola USA, 
TTTech Austria, United Technologies USA.

Automotive industry is considered a rigorous engineering field that produces 
high dependable products. On the other hand, computer industry, especially 
the software sector, doesn't enjoy such a good reputation in terms of its 
dependability. There is a famous joke comparing cars and computers: "If the 
automotive industry's progress was like the computer industry, a car would 
cost only $50 today. However, a car would crash everyday for no reason, and 
occasionally explode, killing all passengers". The major challenge in designing 
the next generation of car with a large portion of on-board hardware and 
software, Mr. Heiner, a senior development manger from Mercedes-Chrysler 
indicated in his report, was to use fault tolerance techniques in the hardware 
design and to use formal methods in the software design to ensure that a 
highly computerised vehicle works as reliable as a traditional mechanical one. 
Mr. Liden, a senior engineer from Volvo, reported that the on-board computer 
system of their latest Volvo car intensively used B-method in its software 
system. B-method is one of the formal methods for safety-critical software 
development, which has been widely used in railway and air traffic control 
systems. 
A conclusion from this meeting is that all safety-critical systems that use 
computer technology intensively have to apply dependable techniques in their 
hardware and software development. A rushed emergence of combining computer 
technology into various systems will cause tremendous problems and eventual 
damage the industry. Year 2000 problem is a well-known problem caused by 
thoughtless software development. Rigorous use of dependable computing techniques in both hardware and software development is the only way to 
help industry to improve productivity in a safe way.

Other good news out of this IFIP WG 10.4 meeting is the realisation of 
technology transfer from academic to industry. Prof. Kopetz of the Technical 
University of Vienna has had his latest research output, the Time Triggered 
Communication Protocol adopted by Mercedes-Chrysler, Volvo and several other 
major automotive manufacturers. Motorola has decided to implement Time 
Triggered Communication Protocol on silicon for general time-critical and 
dependable communication.

Dr. Y. Chen, the leader of the Research Programme for Highly Dependable Systems 
(PHDS) at Wits University was invited to attend this prestigious meeting. He 
also reported on the highly dependable distributed system being developed in 
the PHDS programme. This system is designed to support safety-critical 
applications like reliable network service redirectors, internet firewalls 
and electronic banking systems.

PHDS programme at Wits is the only research group in South Africa that works 
intensively in the dependable computing area. The goal of this programme is 
to promote the education and industry application of dependable computing 
techniques in South Africa. PHDS hosted an international workshop in dependable 
computing and its industrial applications and the 33rd IFIP WG 10.4 meeting 
in 1998. After successfully offering a one-day course on Dependable Computing 
in April 1997, a half-day course on "B-Method for producing dependable software" 
will be given on 24th February 1999. For more information about PHDS programme 
and the forthcoming B-method course please call Zahn at (011) 716 3309, or 
check: 	

www.cs.wits.ac.za/research/programmes.html