Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Automotive applications for Ethernet are coming
Nov 18 2008 11:55AM | Permalink | Email this | Comments (5) |
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A conversation with Micrel at Electronica naturally highlighted one of their new product initiatives: Ethernet devices that have AEC-Q100 qualification for the automotive industry. The family initially includes a transceiver and two switches. But it raises an interesting question: why Ethernet in an automobile?
The obvious answer is to use Ethernet for interconnecting entertainment and information appliances that would normally use Ethernet outside the automotive environment. But according to Micrel, the answer is actually a bit more interesting than that. A source in the company said that the customer behind the automotive qualification was a famous Bavarian car company—no surprise there. Also not surprising, said company wants to introduce Ethernet into its high-end models, and then spread the technology down-market.
The surprise is the application: code maintenance. According to this Micrel source, the issue that led the car company to turn to Ethernet was time: it takes literally hours to download a new firmware load into a high-end automobile over the existing automotive busses. So the Ethernet connections will initially be used for a dedicated network within the vehicle to update code on the myriad of processors scattered around the car.
Once the bus is proven in this off-line application, Micrel says, the industry will undoubtedly move on to an Ethernet-based architecture for information and entertainment. But that is still in the future, as are decisions by companies other than the one in Bavaria. An interesting back-door approach for bringing the auto industry out of its isolation and into the mainstream of modern networking technology.