Harman Becker Automotive Systems Gmbh

Thomas Erforth

Guenther Kraft

Matthias Rupprecht

Günther Kraft

Bruno Achauer

Arno Kutzki

Peter Kies

A vehicle computing system includes a vehicle computing module mounted on a main system board. The module includes a computing module circuit board with computing components mounted thereon including a central processing unit and a main memory. An edge connector connects the computing module circuit board to an edge connector socket on the main system board. A plurality of computing function interfaces are connected to the edge connector, and include a configuration interface connected to the central processing unit and, via the edge connector, to a controller on the main system board. The controller configures the central processing unit for operation in the vehicle computing system by enabling specification of the computing function interfaces during a vehicle computing module configuration. The computing function interfaces are configured during the vehicle computing module configuration to process data received by the vehicle computing module via the computing function interfaces.

Vehicle computing module

A computing device is provided that includes a computing unit, which has a working memory and a processing unit, and a boot memory having control instructions for operating the computing device. The control instructions are stored in boot memory and are to be transferred to the computing unit at start-up of the computing device. A boot control unit is connected to the computing unit by at least a first and a second interface and connected to the boot memory by a third interface. The boot control unit is configured to transfer a first part of the control instructions from the boot memory via the first interface to the computing unit and to transfer a second part of the control instructions from the boot memory via the second interface to the computing unit.

Booting a computer system at start-up by transferring a first part of instructions using a second bus and transferring a second part of instructions using a first bus where the second bus is configured to transfer instructions at a faster rate than the first bus

A scalable and fully configurable computing architecture for a mobile multimedia architecture used in a vehicle includes a head unit having a processor, a field programmable gate array and a memory. The processor and the memory are configured to communicate over a first bus that is a dedicated memory bus, and the processor and the field programmable gate array are configured to communicate over a separate second bus. The field programmable gate array is configured to be loaded from memory with part of a multimedia vehicle-related application-specific functionality that is executable by the field programmable gate array, and the processor is cooperatively operable with the field programmable gate array to execute another portion of the multimedia vehicle-related application-specific functionality. The multimedia vehicle-related application-specific functionality in the field programmable gate array may be changed with software and downloaded to the field programmable gate array in the field. In addition, due to the first and second busses being recognized industry standard busses, any of the processor, the field programmable gate array and the memory are fully scaleable and configurable.

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Karlsruhe, Germany

Thomas Erforth