Global Designer: Japanese-automotive software goes horizontal

Toyota Motors is moving to a horizontal and cooperative model for software development to meet the increasing demand for more sophisticated and widespread automotive electronics. Traditionally, Japanese designers in the automotive industry have developed software for single applications instead of using standardized software platforms upon which vendors could build myriad applications, according to Koichi Tanigawa, general manager of the development department at the integrated-system-engineering division of the vehicle-engineering group of Toyota. He recently spoke at the Freescale (www.freescale.com) Technology Forum Japan 2005 in Tokyo.

With the increased use of microcontrollers and sensors in such automotive applications as vehicle control, safety, and pollution control, automotive electronics have become hot markets. Fulfilling the needs of those applications requires a lot more software development, he says.

In the Japanese-automotive industry, suppliers and automotive manufacturers have a vertical-integration relationship, in which conventional and limited suppliers deliver components to automotive manufacturers. This approach makes suppliers a type of subsidiary of the automakers in vertical-integration systems. For example, Toyota has developed its own dedicated software. But, as the amount of the software increases, it is using multiple developers to develop individual layers, including the operating system, middleware, and applications.

Toyota Motor Corp, www.toyota.com.