Automotive Systems

efficiency, while security systems protect the car from unauthorized manipulation. An automotive system typically consists of dedicated processors, software, and inter-faces that let the system measure, manipu-late, and otherwise interact with its external environment. Designers optimize such sys-tems to reflect specific application character-istics. Apart from a system’s desired func-tionality, automotive system designers must consider many possibly conflicting qualities and constraints. Developing an automotive system can thus involve hundreds or thou-sands of variants, adding to the existing engi-neering complexity. Whereas variability has typically been addressed on a case-by-case basis in late development phases, designers now need a managed, systematic approach to the ever-increasing number of variants. Product lines provide this systematic ap-proach, along with a special focus on vari-ability among related products. As we dis-cuss here, systematic planning and continu-ous variability management is a prerequisite for effective product lines. We’ve developed an approach to modeling and utilizing vari-ability to support the efficient creation of product variants. Our approach is based on experiences with several industrial case studies at Bosch. Before describing them, we explain how product line development meets the major design challenges in the au-tomotive system domain. Product line development Automotive systems typically have thou-sands of requirements, but some are espe-cially important. Many automotive systems are real-time systems with strict temporal requirements that result from the internal control loops. Thus, a computation’s cor-rectness depends, in part, on its timeliness. focu