EU project cuts cost of safety-critical embedded systems
Anne-Françoise PELE 7/6/2011 5:33 AM EDT
PARIS – The EU-funded INTERESTED (INTERoperable Embedded Systems Tool chain for Enhanced rapid Design, prototyping and code generation) project has achieved its goals in terms of reducing the cost and improving the quality and time-to-market of safety-critical embedded systems in Europe.
The three-year INTERESTED project has been launched to create a reference and open interoperable embedded systems tool-chain, fulfilling the needs of the industry for designing and prototyping embedded systems. Upon conclusion, partners claimed that design and deployment costs had been reduced by up to 50 percent.
Also, the INTERESTED reference tool chain is claimed to have successfully assimilated tools from leading European embedded tool vendors into three distinct design domains – system and software design, networking and execution platform, and timing and code analysis – covering the full spectrum of embedded systems and software development.
The project gathers a consortium of European embedded systems tools vendors, including
AbsInt Angewandte Informatik (Germany),
Atego (UK),
CEA (France),
Esterel Technologies (France),
Evidence (Italy),
Symtavision (Germany),
Sysgo (Germany) and
TTTech Computertechnik (Austria).
Eric Bantegnie, CEO of Esterel Technologies and co-ordinator of the INTERESTED consortium, commented:
“It has been a massive effort.
The past 12 months alone has seen the completion of 17 integrations between the 11 different tools in the INTERESTED reference tool chain, so far resulting in 14 new product prototypes.
This extends from requirements capture down to the actual integration of the code on target, including verification and validation.”
Project partners said the reference tool chain has also been evaluated and validated by a host of European embedded tool users on practical applications against real-world design interoperability and cost-reduction requirements.
These industrial partners, including Airbus Operations S.A.S (France), Thales (France), CEA (France), and Siemens Mobility Division, Rail Automation (Germany) and Magneti Marelli (Italy) representative of the primary, mission and safety-critical target industries, said they had reported productivity improvements.
Thales notably claimed that the rigor imposed by the use of model-driven tools compared to freeform alternatives resulted in a 25-percent reduction in overall project effort, a 10-percent reduction in the time spent on modeling and a 25-percent reduction in the number of remarks raised by design reviewers.
Similarly, CEA said it compared the overall developed effort and observed that the initial development costs had been reduced by about 40 percent and 69 percent for on-going maintenance costs.
To read the final report, click here.
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