Board Support Package (BSP) Development Services

Expertise in BSP Development Projects for Automotive

Embitel offers Board Support Package (BSP) solutions and reference designs for an array of microcontroller platforms (Freescale, Fujitsu, IAR and more) that are popularly deployed for automotive applications.

In our automotive journey of more than 11 years, we have built a team with in-depth expertise in automotive ECUs (control units), software stacks and embedded hardware; successfully delivering projects for OEMs and Tier-1 suppliers from across the world.

Features of BSP Solutions for Automotive:

• Custom-built or off-the-shelf BSP
• MISRA C compliant
• Pre-tested for low power foot-print

We offer ready-to-deploy BSP reference design solutions for all the popular hardware platforms. Leverage the pre-tested and production grade BSP reference design to reduce product development cost and time-to-market.

We also provide custom BSP development, tailor-made for your automotive requirements.

We develop board support package that adds value to your product development efforts. In order to be sure of the quality and integrity of the solution, we strictly adhere to the quality guidelines and MISRA C best practices

Our Board Support Package is tested rigorously under stress conditions to optimize the overall system performance. This includes optimization of power to reduce the power footprint and optimisation of the boot-time.

Talk to our BSP Consultant

 

Meet Our Automotive Leaders

With 15+ years of experience in the automotive embedded industry, Aneesh has been instrumental in the impeccable execution of the projects and going beyond the expected KRAs’.

He is a highly revered leader and is known for his calm nature, immense understanding of the domain and ability to devise solutions.

Aneesh Adkadkam | Head-Automotive BU
(‘Captain Cool’ of our Automotive Team)

Suresh always leads from the front. He has spearheaded some of the most critical projects and delivered unmatched solutions to the customers.

He knows the automotive embedded industry inside out and has the ability to clearly define the project scope, thus reducing the turn-around time considerably.

Suresh Kumar | Technical Manager
(A people’s Manager)

 

Flash Bootloader Factsheet:

This Board Support Package (BSP) factsheet has been designed to provide all the necessary information related to BSP solution package and BSP software integration and support services.

Download this Board Support Package hand-book to also know about:

• BSP software stack business model
• Benefits of one-time licensing fee engagement model
• Value-add features of our read-to-deploy BSP solution
• Automotive related use-cases of Board Support Package

View PDF

Please refer to Board Support Package FAQ’s for more details.

 

BSP Development Services: Embedded Hardware and Software

Device Driver Development

Robust device drivers development is an essential part of BSP development. These drives support the different peripherals of the hardware including USB, GPS, touchscreen and more.

These low-level drivers allows the OS Kernel to communicate with the hardware’s component like internal/external buses, CPU and memory.

 

Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) Libraries Development

The HAL includes all the routines that are required for hardware initialization, interrupt handling, hardware timer and clock and memory management.

Implement Seed and Key algorithm for security access

Additional device drivers and other services can be added to this library to support any custom hardware requirements.

 

Porting and Migration Services

We offer support for Android BSP Porting and Linux BSP Porting to custom hardware platform

Complete integration of BSP with your target hardware and OS is provided. Unit testing, functional testing and integration testing is performed to ensure bug-free code.

BSP development, customization, application specific configurations and hardware-specific foot-print optimizations, bootloader specific configurations are carried out efficiently.

Service and Safety Layer Services

Diagnostics Module: Development and integration of automotive diagnostic software stacks (UDS/J1939/KWP2000/OBD II).

Support for development and integration of custom-built diagnostic stack, as per your business requirements.

Safety Module Development: Support for development and integration of following safety module to safe-guard system from run-time errors:

RAM Corruption Test

ROM Corruption Test

CPU Overload Test

Stack Overflow Test

Program Flow Test

ECU State Manager: An ECU State Manager software module is designed to periodically check the current state of the ECU.

The integrated ECU State Manager, periodically fetches value from the lower layers (HAL and Low-level Device Drivers) to identify if the system is in one of the following modes:

Init mode

Run mode

Fault mode

Prepare to sleep mode

Sleep mode

FCM (Fault Code Memory): FCM module is also integrated in order to store data regarding active faults, in-active faults and freeze frame data for future analysis and diagnostics of the system.

This is a robust module designed to transfer fault code memory data between Non-Volatile Memory (NVM)/ROM and RAM based on the current state of the system

FAQs: Board Support Package (BSP) Development

Q. Your automotive software & hardware teams have hands-on experience with which microcontrollers for BSP development.

A. Our Automotive software and hardware teams have partnered with global customers for development of Board Support Package (BSP) based on following hardware platforms:

1. Renesas ( RL 78, RH 850)
2. Freescale( S12G128, MPC56XX)
3. Fujitsu, Texas, Atmel, STMicroelectronics and Cypress semiconductor.

Q. What is our business engagement model for BSP software development ?

A. We partner with our automotive customers under a one-time licensing fee model.

Under this model, our customer gets access to the entire source code of the Board Support Package (BSP). Customer also owns the IP rights of the BSP software.

Such a model delivers an added advantage of reuse of the BSP software modules across multiple projects (multiple platforms and/or for multiple application software).

P.S: When you partner with us for BSP Development, we also share the static files ;viz; cfg.c and cfg.h files. This enables your team to manage the system configuration and re-use of the source code for different projects.

Q. What programming language is used for development of BSP software? Is your code compliant with any global standard?

A. Our team has in-depth expertise in Embedded C software programming language for BSP development.

Our BSP code is compliant with 2012 MISRA C standard.

Q. If we have a custom-developed or third party software component, can it be ported with your existing architecture without any compatibility issues?

A. Yes, we ensure seamless portability of your software component module to our existing software architecture with the help of our API ( Application Programming Interfaces) based design.

Here at Embitel, we don’t follow a coding practice that is based on global variables. Rather, we follow an API based and a layered architecture design for BSP development. This ensures that any customization or addition/removal of a software module doesn’t require major changes in the source code of that module.

All the software modules in different layers of the BSP, communicate via APIs’ . This makes it easy for us to port your software components to our software architecture without causing any compatibility issues.

Q. Do you provide support for both Real time Operating Systems ( RTOS) and non-RTOS systems?

A. Yes, we have experienced engineering professionals who can work on both RTOS (Real time Operating Systems) and Non-RTOS based applications by following API based architecture for application programming.

Q. What tool-chains does your team expertise in for BSP development ?

A. At Embitel Technologies, we have deployed the following tool-chains for BSP development across different projects:

1. Softune IDE: An Integrated Development Environment, Softtune is useful in developing, emulating and debugging an embedded application. The IDE is primarily used for the FR family of Fujitsu Microcontrollers.
2. IAR: is an embedded workbench that is primarily used for RENESAS microcontroller. It includes the IAR C/C++ compiler and debugger.
3. Greenhills: Multi IDE from Greenhills Software is used for developing BSP for PowerPC. Our automotive team has years of experience in the development and customization of BSP for PowerPC.
4. CodeWarrior: CodeWarrior is one of the most widely used IDEs (integrated development environment) for embedded systems. It is used for editing, compiling and debugging software program for a wide range of microcontroller families, primarily the FreeScale.

Q. Do you also offer any documentation and testing related services for BSP software?

A. Yes. We offer the following documentation and testing services:

1. Low Level Design Documentation
2. API Documentation for software components
3. Module Level Test Plan and Report: In order to ensure the quality of the application being developed, we perform unit testing, functional testing, and integration testing during the product development lifecycle. These tests are executed based on a test case plan and a report is generated once the tests are performed.
   • a. Functional Testing & User Acceptance Testing : If we are involved in the development for the application software, we perform the functional testing and user acceptance testing.
   • b. Manual testing: Manual testing is done for low level drivers
   • c. Unit testing/ Script Testing: The unit testing is done through the Check C framework. A script testing helps in ensuring a Modified condition/Decision coverage.
   • d. Integration Testing: If the application being developed has any additional software component, as per the user’s requirement, then an integration testing of the software modules is performed.

Our Expertise in BSP Tools and Technologies

What is the Board Support Package?

Board Support Package, abbreviated as BSP, is the set of software codes (for low-level drivers and hardware abstraction layer) which are essential to facilitate robust boot process of a microcontroller.

It does not include any software other than what is necessary for the desired functioning of the peripherals of the System-on-Chip (SoC).

As BSP is the first software code to be developed for a SoC, it also consists of the bootloader software that will load the applications in the OS memory. The board support package is also designed as per the unique specifications of a particular hardware platform and is not dependent on the OS (Operating System). With respect to the automotive embedded systems, the BSP can have varying number of CAN, PWM and ADC channels.

What Function does a BSP perform in an automotive ECU?

The primary function of Board Support Package is to facilitate the communication between the hardware (microcontroller) and the application software.

To enable this, the BSP has

• Low-level Drivers– Vehicle network drivers (CAN, LIN etc), Analog to digital converters and more.
• Hardware Abstraction Layer– I/O handler, Pulse Width Modulation handler, communication control and more.
• Service and Safety layers– RAM, State Manager, Fault Code Memory and Diagnostics stacks (like UDS, OBD2)
• Scheduler and Flash Bootloader

In an automotive ECU, the peripherals on the SOC have to interact with the OS or the Scheduler (depending on the use case). These peripherals may include USB, GPS, touchscreen and more.

Communication between the OS kernel and the hardware component like system Bus and Memory is also taken care by the Board Support Package.

Modules to check the ECU state, memory management and fault code memory (FCM) are all handled by BSP software.
BSP may support additional functions as well depending on the use cases and applications.