The Underrated ECU Software Development: Why It’s the Key Weapon for OEMs to Outpace the Market?

As the smallest component of automotive EE architecture, the Electronic Control Unit (ECU) plays a critical role. In fact, most control and communication tasks in vehicles are carried out by various microcontrollers as part of the ECU. With ECUs, overall vehicle performance and safety are significantly enhanced.

For example, in safety-critical functions like Anti-lock Braking Systems (ABS), ECUs adjust braking pressure based on wheel speed information to prevent tire lock-ups, thereby improving driving safety.

Statistics show that a standard modern vehicle contains over 40 ECUs, with high-end models housing 150 or more. Despite trends like decoupling hardware and software or moving toward centralized electronic architectures, traditional ECUs will continue to play a decisive role due to embedded systems' ability to ensure real-time performance and ASIL-D-level functional safety.

Today, as vehicle models and features expand and development cycles shorten, it is more crucial than ever for OEMs and suppliers to ensure efficient and reliable ECU software development.

However, amidst rapid advancements in new automotive technologies, OEMs often prioritize innovations in smart systems—especially in ADAS and autonomous driving—while overlooking the importance of maintaining and optimizing deeply embedded microcontroller toolchains. As ECU complexity grows, so do the challenges of software development. Eitech believes that advancements in ECU software development will influence the pace of automotive innovation, cost competitiveness, and safety over the coming decades, serving as a critical factor in maintaining and boosting OEMs’ market edge.

As the vehicle's intelligent core, the ECU manages critical systems like braking, steering, and body controls. Its safety directly impacts vehicle performance and overall security. With the acceleration of automotive intelligence, vehicles are increasingly interconnected, making them more susceptible to cybersecurity threats. Ensuring robust cybersecurity in ECU software development is crucial and requires comprehensive measures to safeguard vehicle systems and data.

On one hand, the diversity and evolution of cyber threats make it increasingly complex to protect ECUs from malware, hacking, and unauthorized access. ETAS suggests addressing these threats with a multi-layered security architecture. This includes encryption, authentication, intrusion detection, and secure boot mechanisms to ensure data, communication, and hardware/software security throughout ECU development.

For example, during ECU development, it is vital to ensure that only authorized devices or software can access the ECU. Encryption techniques should protect authentication information, preventing identity forgery. Fine-grained access control mechanisms can manage varying access levels to ECUs.

Moreover, due to limited computational resources in ECUs, implementing comprehensive security measures without compromising performance remains challenging. Tailored lightweight, efficient security protocols are needed to ensure protection without sacrificing performance.

Additionally, adhering to varying and stringent cybersecurity regulations across different regions and industries adds another layer of complexity to ECU development. For instance, as of July 2024, all vehicles exported to the EU must comply with UN-R155, the world’s first international regulation on vehicle cybersecurity. It mandates strict cybersecurity measures during vehicle design and production to protect against cyberattacks and data breaches.

In August 2024, China released the mandatory national standard GB 44495-2024: Technical Requirements for Information Security of Automobiles, which will take effect on January 1, 2026, for new certified models. It outlines specific requirements for external connectivity, communication, data security, and software updates, along with corresponding testing methods. Even products already certified under UN-R155 may require targeted technical adjustments to meet China’s national standards for domestic models.

As a result, ECU software development must comply with evolving global cybersecurity regulations. Real-time monitoring and integration of updates into the vehicle development lifecycle are essential to ensure ECU software remains secure and up to date.

As a pioneer in automotive cybersecurity, ETAS helps clients manage the complexity of ECU development, reduce cybersecurity risks, and maximize commercial potential. Their comprehensive suite of network products and professional services protects millions of vehicles worldwide, setting the standard for software-defined vehicle cybersecurity.

For instance, ETAS encryption library ESCRYPT CycurLIB, tailored for embedded systems, provides efficient implementations of encryption algorithms and security standards. Designed specifically for resource-constrained ECU systems, it supports all common encryption algorithms and certificate standards (including Chinese standards), works with AUTOSAR and non-AUTOSAR configurations, and operates on all platforms. Optimizations for speed, RAM, and ROM are available for different processors.

Additionally, ETAS innovative and flexible ESCRYPT CycurHSM security firmware can be deployed in any ECU, including domain controllers. It ensures secure boot, in-vehicle communication security, and component protection, meeting standards like ISO 26262 ASIL-D, Automotive SPICE, and ISO/SAE 21434.

Notably, ETAS implementation of ESCRYPT CycurHSM on Infineon’s second-generation AURIX™ TC3xx hardware security module (HSM) successfully passed the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Cryptographic Algorithm Validation Program (CAVP) certification in 2023, supporting validated cryptographic algorithms with full compliance.

In addition, complex calibration is one of the major challenges in ECU software development. Indeed, as a critical process in ECU software development, calibration affects the overall vehicle performance. During the calibration process, it's essential to ensure that the software adapts to the physical system and optimizes the vast number of calibration parameters in the application, considering the numerous interactions between software functions and the ECU.

Specifically, on one hand, handling ECU documentation and ensuring accurate calibration is a complex task often affected by information desynchronization and low knowledge transfer efficiency, which may reduce overall productivity and consume excessive engineering time. At the same time, it can extend the ECU development cycle, delay vehicle development projects, and increase funding costs.

On the other hand, the calibration error rate in the ECU development process is high. If calibration parameters are misunderstood leading to incorrect settings, repeated testing and recalibration are needed; also, incorrectly configured parameters may not meet regulatory standards, potentially leading to costly revisions and recalls.

To address these challenges, ETAS has proposed a series of methods and solutions based on its 30 years of in-depth experience in embedded automotive software.

Enhancing Documentation and Knowledge Sharing: Providing comprehensive documentation that clearly explains each calibration parameter, including its purpose, interdependencies with other parameters, and its impact on the system. Implementing an interactive documentation solution to reduce errors and improve process efficiency.

Building User-Friendly Interfaces: Simplifying the calibration process by offering solutions that only provide relevant parameters and options to the user; using visual sliders and dynamic graphs to make understanding and adjusting calibration settings easier.

Utilizing Automation and Standardization Tools: For example, INCA-FLOW, which has an intuitive UI and is used for routine calibration tasks, reducing manual operations and simplifying the calibration process, while ensuring consistency and reliability across different projects and teams.

Leveraging Simulation and Data Modeling: Using simulation and modeling tools like ASCMO to create mathematical models. These models optimize and generate calibration parameters using trained mathematical models without affecting actual hardware, and automatically calibrate physical model parameters based on test data within the MOCA environment. Moreover, embedding mathematical models into the ECU system model makes operations and testing easier.

Based on this, ETAS’s calibration solutions and real-time calibration verification solutions turn data into valuable information and tools, improving ECU calibration efficiency and accuracy, providing strong market competitiveness.

For instance, with nearly 20 years of automotive industry development, ETAS’s automotive calibration test diagnostic tool INCA has evolved into a powerful integrated platform for calibration solutions, used in cross-domain standardized hardware and software tools for internal combustion engine power systems, electric vehicle power systems, thermal management, and chassis.

Notably, INCA features a user-friendly interface that simplifies calibration settings, real-time analysis, and visualization, while reducing search time and optimizing calibration parameters. As of now, the INCA basic toolchain and various plugins have been widely used by over 50,000 users worldwide in ECU project development processes.

Additionally, ETAS’s interactive software documentation solution EHANDBOOK, displays ECU software’s functional logic interactively and graphically, making complex automotive software easier to understand. It’s particularly helpful in understanding signal flow and dependencies between ECU functions, significantly reducing ECU software complexity and minimizing time spent on ineffective searches.

In practical applications, combining EHANDBOOK and INCA tools effectively reduces manual tasks such as data searching, analysis, and transfer. INCA experiments can be automatically set up within EHANDBOOK, allowing engineers to seamlessly switch between understanding ECU functions and implementing changes, supporting quick access to needed data, and providing immediate feedback for efficient troubleshooting, significantly enhancing team efficiency, accuracy, and collaboration in ECU calibration and diagnostics.

Evidently, ETAS relies on comprehensive, non-binding, and expandable ECU software development solutions to achieve seamless integration and communication between tools, helping OEMs and suppliers reduce overall project costs while maximizing the efficiency of the software development process, effectively addressing challenges like automotive embedded microcontroller software functional development, overall cybersecurity, and complex calibration.