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Today's requirements for engine management controllers are increasing in various aspects. Stronger emission standards and diagnosis requirements demand more complex control algorithms, faster system response times, better usage of sensor information throughout the system and higher accuracy of actuator stimuli. Despite that, new solutions are needed to answer the requirement for higher cost effectiveness, flexibility and reusability. The trade-off between cost and functionality is constantly being reviewed when choosing the right microcontroller to operate with an ECU. Integration of more complex and flexible functionality into the microcontroller helps to reduce the need for custom ASICs and thus reduce the overall system cost. In order to reduce the demands on CPU throughput within the microcontroller, manufacturers have introduced smart peripherals that off-load some of the work of the CPU into the peripherals.

Managing a combustion engine means the computation and generation of actions according to the information coming from the engine such as position, speed, acceleration, etc. The automotive market constantly requires more functionality, security, reliability, and cost effectiveness. To fulfil these requirements the future engine management systems will need to better use the information coming form the engine rather than multiplying the number of sensors. Compared with existing systems, the new engines will require more accuracy and individual control for each cylinder. Such an improved system will provide advantages like higher diagnosis capabilities, higher accuracy to manage the actuators, the capability to compute engine torque and the ability to access combustion information to reduce emissions. This work is supported under OMI (Open Microprocessor Systems Initiative, a funding regime of the European Commission) as part of the project “DRIVE” EP26938.