Full toolset addresses automotive design needs

Mentor Graphics is launching what it claims is the industry's most comprehensive set of electrical and electronic (E/E) design solutions for the automotive market.

Mentor Graphics has significantly extended its already successful automotive offerings and is launching the industry's most comprehensive set of electrical and electronic (E/E) design solutions for the automotive market.

With the recently acquired Volcano automotive networking solutions and SystemVision, a new modelling and simulation tool for automotive mechatronics subsystems, Mentor now has best-in-class tools for design and analysis of the electrical distribution system and its associated harnesses, for embedded system/software and for in-vehicle network design.

These offerings are the foundation for a tool suite aimed at addressing the complete automotive E/E design process.

Mentor also announced that the company is now a premium member of Autosar, the standards organisation working to create an open standard for automotive engineering architecture.

"Automotive systems design has two essential components - mechanical and electrical/electronic".

"In the E/E design arena, Mentor is leading the way with not just the most comprehensive product portfolio of any company in the industry, but also the largest and most richly populated assembly of specialist engineers in the market", said Walden C Rhines, Mentor Graphics CEO and Chairman.

"Rising complexity and emerging standards such as Autosar mean the time is right for a full electronic design solution, and Mentor is unique in offering solutions to serve the broad range of automotive electrical and electronics design needs".

"We believe our investment and commitment here will significantly benefit our customers for many years ahead".

The company's strength in electrical systems and harness design was extended to in-vehicle network design with the recent acquisition of Volcano Communications Technologies.

Volcano is an industry leader of networking and data communication solutions that supports the development of in-vehicle networking systems.

Customers include Audi, BMW, Bosch, Visteon and Volvo.

SystemVision enables the system designer to model systems and components with a virtual prototype and use simulation to perform the critical analyses of electrical, mechanical, thermal and hydraulic subsystems needed to help ensure successful automotive system design.

SystemVision is based on a mixed-signal modelling language, VHDL-AMS, which as a vendor- independent standard language enables very efficient information exchange between original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and suppliers, reducing communication problems with the concept of executable specifications.

Mr Hessel, speaker of Working Group AK 30 of the German association for Research on Automobile Technology (Forschungsvereinigung Automobiltechnik, FAT) within VDA (German Association of the Automotive Industry) said: "SystemVision is one of the reference simulators for AK 30, because of the language coverage and good performance".

Hessel is team leader, Engineering Methods and Tools at Hella KgaA Hueck and Co, one of SystemVision's first customers.

SystemVision is fully integrated with Mentor's successful electrical systems design solution, Capital Harness Systems (CHS), and complements CHS's unique electrical analysis tool, Capital Analysis.

SystemVision is available today and priced ranging from the E/E version at US $9000 to the high end SystemVision Pro Plus bundle at US $38,000.

Mentor's CHS product suite captures and allocates all system devices into the vehicle topology.

Merged with option and variant definitions the entire electrical distribution system (EDS) is synthesised and stored centrally for reuse across the enterprise.

CHS design tools are fully supported by analysis, view synthesis and enterprise integration tools that support correct-by-design outputs that minimise warranty exposure.

Mentor is a leading supplier of EDS and harness solutions to major OEMs and Tier 1 suppliers and CHS is now being deployed as the next-generation solution for many of these companies.

Mentor Graphics completes its comprehensive automotive solution with its "design to deployment" embedded software products.

The Nucleus family of embedded software products offers an integrated developers' toolkit, ranging from UML high-level design tools through to the royalty-free real-time operating system (RTOS) and middleware specifically targeted to automotive applications and processors.

Mentor Graphics will continue to expand its offerings to the automotive industry as the growth of in-vehicle electronics and software continues.

Mentor Graphics intends to become the preferred source of E/E design automation for this industry segment and make significant contributions to achieve the goals of higher quality and reduced costs of today's competitive environment.

As electrical/electronic and software offerings become more important in the vehicle functionality and customer impact, Mentor will increasingly contribute in providing solutions to better address: functional design, allocation, and reusability; system and electronic control unit (ECU) design and integration; vehicle architecture definition and optimisation; network design and optimisation; multidomain analysis; in-vehicle software and mechatronics design; electrical distribution systems design and manufacturing; and documentation and diagnostics.

Additionally, Mentor continues to strengthen strategic alliances and relationships with other key suppliers to the automotive industry such as UGS, Mathworks and Dassault Systemes in order to address the industry need for a complete design environment.

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