OSEK/VDX - The operating system for distributed systems in cars

Automotive electronics systems are growing more and more complex: Customers demand more performance, microcontrollers provide enhanced power, network communication enables individual micro controllers to be linked into very powerful but highly complex distributed systems, application software gets more sophisticated. This dramatically increasing complexity will lead to severe problems in system design unless these systems are organized into a structured design with additional higher software layers encapsulating the lower levels and thus reducing the software complexity to an acceptable degree which can be handled efficiently by application designers. OSEK/VDX provides a solution for this higher layer. OSEK/VDX is a general operating system which addresses the three aspects of real time task management, communication services and network management while considering the special cost/performance constraints of automotive industries as well. A first specification has been worked out by some European cars manufacturers and suppliers and published in October 1995. Since then the OSEK/VDX community is open for any cooperating partner to contribute.