AUTOSAR for dummies - #2 - SW-Cs

SW feature selection and planning in the automobile field is done at the vehicle level

The features for the vehicle will be planned by vehicle manufacturers.As per AUTOSAR, all SW features could/should be divided into components called Atomic software components. Atomic SW-C cannot be divided further. They are nothing but one or more source files grouped together based on features and some other factors. Typically the features (one or more Atomic SW-Cs) are allocated to multiple ECUs which will be developed and manufactured by ECU suppliers. In an ideal scenario, the OEM(vehicle manufacturer) will create the decomposition of features to SW-C and defines how they communicate with each other and then group the SW-Cs to the ECU suppliers (mapping of features to ECUs cannot be made one to one since many features spread across ECUs.For e.g, The feature to display low fuel warning needs the info from Engine ECU to be transmitted to cluster ECU and the displayed on Dashboard. Here the communication data is fuel warning status and communication medium could be CAN, Flexray,etc..)

The Atomic SW component communicates via VFB.VFB is a concept which needs a lot more explaining to do, we will see that in a separate article. When we consider a single ECU, the SW divided into three parts application, rte and basic software which we would discuss in autosar-for-dummies-part-3(BSW).