Which is more complex - car or an operating system? - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: daqq
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 02, 2020, 10:55:41 am
content: Hi guys,There has been a philosophical discussion here as to which is more complicated - a modern car or a modern operating system (let's go with Windows)? I know that 'complicated' is not an exactly measurable quantity, but I'd say you can compare two items.My guess would be that an operating system needs to be more complex and will have to account for more complicated interactions, whether or not it's within itself or with the outside world. At tens of millions of lines of code for itself, it has to play nice with itself as well as third party stuff, while at the same time maintaining compatibility with a load of historical baggage. Add to that the demand that it runs usably on pretty much anything from an ancient brick with buttons all the way up to an overpowered workstation that 20 years ago would have been categorized as a supercomputer with dozens of cores... and with hundreds of new security issues popping up every year... add to that needing to deal with third party softwareandhardware bugs... adding new features and hardware support on the fly...In terms of the amount of developers needed, I read somewhere that the Windows 7 group had around 10k developers working on it. I'm not sure as to the veracity of the information, but sounds in the right ballpark. I've no clue as to how many people are needed to design, say, a Tesla or a WV car.What's your opinion?Thanks,David

author: RoGeorge
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 02, 2020, 11:00:31 am
content: Modern cars have at least one operating system, plus many other systems, so car is more complex than an operating system.Q.E.D.

author: greenpossum
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 02, 2020, 11:01:23 am
content: Wife

author: Rerouter
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 02, 2020, 11:13:30 am
content: Cars and trucks usually have less total software complexity, but that is somewhat required to still be able to review and test for edge cases, its one of the few industries where its not easy to "just patch it after release"Each module is very built for purpose, meaning there is not much generalized code, take a normal ECU, most times the ROM image is in the ballpark of 256MB or less,The main horrible mess of complexity can be found in the "infotainment" system, e.g. the radio and all the other crap that gets packed in there, more often than not they literally run on linux, and are bodge upon bodge upon bodge, but as certain parts will be stripped down for size, likely puts it at less than a fully featured OS.Think of it like everything but the radio is usually akin to a large microprocessor written with embedded code, the radio is like a raspberry pi with enough hats to scrape the ceiling.

author: artag
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 02, 2020, 12:05:24 pm
content: Yes.Sorry. Absurd question. We have no reasonable way to measure complexity in a consistent way across disciplnes, so the question is as meaningless. Apples and Oranges, as we say.

author: MK14
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 02, 2020, 01:33:00 pm
content: The answer is quite easy to supply.If L = How long is a piece of string. Lc, Los being the respective pieces of string.Qc = Complexity factor of a CarQos = Complexity factor of an OSSo, assuming a 9th order, string theory of complexity, of the Q's.Qc - Lc = Qos - Los = 0.64649467388363882562943573So, in summary, they are BOTH very (opinion/specs dependent) complicated beasts.

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 02, 2020, 02:46:35 pm
content: Quote from: RoGeorge on June 02, 2020, 11:00:31 amIndeed. That makes the question sort of moot as it is.Now if course, not all OSs have equal overall "complexity". A full Windows distribution has far more software complexity than a typical RTOS used for some subsystems in cars. Even a Linux(or QNX)-based OS used for UI in modern cars is less "complex" than Windows. So it can't be answered in a simple way.As to the total number of engineers involved in a typical car project, don't underestimate it. All car vendors than I know of (even Tesla, which develops a lot of in-house stuff) use MANY third-party subsystems. It's very hard to estimate how many people in total could have possibly worked on all subsystems composing a given car. Not unlikely to be in the thousands, if not tens of thousands overall.

author: RoGeorge
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 02, 2020, 03:15:58 pm
content: Oh, well, if by "complex" you mean cumbersome, then yes, nothing can beat Windows, except maybe whatgreenpossumsaid.

author: ejeffrey
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 02, 2020, 04:08:34 pm
content: It is hard to compare quantitatively, but as far as I am concerned qualitatively computer hardware systems are generally orders of magnitude more complex than the mechanical parts of cars, airplanes, rockets, etc. And the software systems that run on that hardware is orders of magnitude more complex again.Of course as mentioned cars have computers in them -- lots of them, and they are the most complex part of the car.I am assuming what I consider a relatively non-controversial intuitive idea of complexity: that things with more distinct valid states, more unique elements, more constraints, more variables, etc. makes things more complex. There is actually a quantitative way to capture this, the kolmogorov complexity but it is theoretically impossible to calculate in almost all cases.One question you would want to answer when looking at embedded or special purpose computers is whether to count the internal complexity or only the functional complexity. Compared to a desktop computer the job of an ECU or even an in-car infotainment system is very simple. Yet that infotainment system may run a full fledged general purpose OS underneath with a huge amount of functionality unused but available.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 02, 2020, 04:57:41 pm
content: Quote from: ejeffrey on June 02, 2020, 04:08:34 pmI tend to disagree. It is just that car technology has been around longer and it is highly optimised to offer reliability at cut throat prices. Take something like hydraulic disc brakes for example. They look so simple but I'm very sure you can spend several person work-years to engineer them from scratch to the same level of reliability and simplicity.A Youtuber called Muntz (or so) takes cars apart and analyses the construction methods. His videos about Tesla cars show how complicated it is to engineer a car (besides the electronics) and what incremental improvements Tesla has made in the past years.

author: schmitt trigger
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 02, 2020, 05:11:58 pm
content: Let's take a single large subassembly on a vehicle: the transmission.Modern, 8, 9 and 10 gear automatic transmissions on themselves are so spectacularly complex, that there are only a few companies that can design and build them.Even companies like Ford and GM had to form an alliance to design the latest automatic transmission for their trucks, as the development cost was above a billion dollars.

author: themadhippy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 02, 2020, 05:14:16 pm
content: from a long time agoIf GM had developed technology like Microsoft, we would all be driving cars with the following characteristics:1. For no reason at all, your car would crash twice a day.2. Every time they repainted the lines on the road, you would have to buy a new car.3. Occasionally, executing a manoeuver such as a left-turn would cause your car to shut down and refuse to restart, and you would have to reinstall the engine.4. When your car died on the freeway for no reason, you would just accept this, restart and drive on.5. Only one person at a time could use the car, unless you bought ‘Car95’ or ‘CarNT’, and then added more seats.6. Apple would make a car powered by the sun, reliable, five times as fast, and twice as easy to drive, but would run on only five per cent of the roads.7. Oil, water temperature and alternator warning lights would be replaced by a single ‘general car default’ warning light.8. New seats would force every-one to have the same size butt.9. The airbag would say ‘Are you sure?’ before going off.10. Occasionally, for no reason, your car would lock you out and refuse to let you in until you simultaneously lifted the door handle, turned the key, and grabbed the radio antenna.11. GM would require all car buyers to also purchase a deluxe set of road maps from Rand-McNally (a subsidiary of GM), even though they neither need them nor want them. Trying to delete this option would immediately cause the car’s performance to diminish by 50 per cent or more. Moreover, GM would become a target for investigation by the Justice Department.12. Every time GM introduced a new model, car buyers would have to learn how to drive all over again because none of the controls would operate in the same manner as the old car.13. You would press the ‘start’ button to shut off the engine.

author: JPortici
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 02, 2020, 05:43:59 pm
content: Quote from: Rerouter on June 02, 2020, 11:13:30 amyou would be suprisedwe also have a mechanic workshop and in the past few years many of the newer, higher end volvo and audi we serviced suffered from serious bugs in the transmission and lightning ecu. Customer would be asked to go to the dealer at least once every few weeks to update the ECUsserious bugs meaning the gear will refuse to change, switch off / back on or that the whole rear lights would be stuck, witch of / back on.I want to say that the engine and the safety critical parts are still immune to this problem.. i want to.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 02, 2020, 06:05:22 pm
content: Quote from: JPortici on June 02, 2020, 05:43:59 pmAt least they got the car out of the door. Volkswagen can't even get the software to work on their new ID.3. They are going to pull a 'Rigol' by selling the cars with many features missing.

author: CatalinaWOW
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 02, 2020, 06:12:37 pm
content: Depends on what you mean by complexity. Windows has hundreds of thousands of lines of code, while a car has only a few thousands, or possibly tens of thousands of parts. But the Windows code works in a very simple environment where there are only a few hundred instructions and the language can be fully described in a single volume. While the metallurgy of the various parts in a car requires multiple volumes. And that is just one of the myriad of disciplines involved in designing said vehicle. I suspect that the full staff designing Windows is an order of magnitude or more smaller than the staff designing a car. Which would either mean Windows is less complex or that Microsoft is incredibly efficient compared to auto designers. I know few who would vote on the latter.

author: T3sl4co1l
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 02, 2020, 06:25:35 pm
content: Ah, another opportunity to wax philosophic....I agree with the statement that comparisons aren't useful -- but for different reasons. Consider:How did we arrive at modern, well, anything? Complex software systems are built upon simpler software systems. But they're also nearly useless without complex hardware systems to run them on. Complex hardware systems, in turn, are built upon simpler hardware systems. And those hardware systems are built upon complex industrial processes, which are built upon simpler, and so on and so forth -- we are dozens of generations in at this point, the list goes on.It is notmeaningfulto speak of the development of one technology in isolation, because it depends implicitly upon every other supporting technology that is at a similar level of development. The whole reason we have this complexity today, is because we had a similar increase in complexity in the previous generation, and so on.A more concrete example that motivates this line of thought, is the thought experiment of the time travelling technologist -- if you were transported back 100, 1000, 10,000 years, whatever; even given a robust device to access current knowledge upon, not relying on your memory alone -- what might you be able to accomplish?A typical answer seems to be ~roughly~ 18th century development, but on a much smaller scale, and only after many decades of concerted effort; and assuming adequate patronage from whatever political power you happen to be working under, and assuming no death from the great many natural causes that were typical of the time.I don't think it's reasonable to compare complexity, when the design of a given, exact itemis impossiblewithout some chain of prerequisites. For two items at the same depth, their complexity can be considered equivalent, or perhaps quibbled over in terms of modest degrees of complexity, which might be measured in some agreeable method, like minimal person-hours, or project time or budget, to take that existing technology (previous designs, theory, SDKs, etc.) and make the finished item. Whereas things that exist on different technology nodes, are intrinsically ordered.So, that laid out, I think there are some refinements that can be made:- We might make something with a given technology node, but it doesn't need to be made that way. Many things can be made, across many nodes, that are functionally equivalent. An audio amplifier can be made with ICs, transistors, vacuum tubes, or indeed, carbon granules. We've made a stopwatch (as such) in pure mechanics, discrete transistors, integrated circuits, and software on still-more-advanced integrated circuits; are they all equivalent? (In other words, should we relax the requirement that we consider the technology required to create an exact particular item, but something that is, in some useful ways, equivalent?)- There is a cost-scale tradeoff inherent in economics. Consider the mainframe computer of the 1950s, which might've cost as much as a small factory; are they therefore equivalent in some sense? Or compare the minicomputer of the 1970s to the personal computer of the 1980s or 90s: they might have equivalent performance, but one cost exponentially more than the other; does that make one or the other more advanced?- We do have to be mindful of the minimum investment criteria. It's always possible to make something costmore, so of course we need to avoid cases that ran absurdly over budget, under their performance target, were affected by corrupting influences, etc. They're not more complicated just because of that. Conversely -- we might argue that such influences are inseparably part of the game, and we should use a broader scope. After all, if the locals object to construction of a new hi-tech factory, surely part of that technical node includes either addressing their concerns, or convincing them it's beneficial? Technology isn't just physical objects, it's our entire society top to bottom, thoughts included!Overall I think the idea of technology nodes, or generations, is a useful one, but I'm not sure that there can exist a simple, convincing method to compare things of greatly varying complexity as well as technology. Well, that's just it -- I've enumerated several axes with which we might measure a thing. It's just trying to order multidimensional vectors -- you can createadefinition, but there can be no unique ordering of them.Tim

author: 0xdeadbeef
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 02, 2020, 06:34:45 pm
content: Quote from: CatalinaWOW on June 02, 2020, 06:12:37 pmI guess you underestimate both by quite a bit. I guess a typical engine control unit (gasoline, diesel) already has a few hundred thousand lines of code. Maybe already a few millions. Haven't checked recently but from what I know just the application functionality for something like lambda control already has thousands of lines of code. Hard to tell nowadays with auto-generated code and things like that.And that's only one of the many control units. I guess the cockpit stuff with multimedia and navigation (even letting aside driving assistants) could already use much more code than the engine control unit. Definitely more bloated code for sure. And don't underestimate how many control units (i.e. microcontroller systems) there are in a car. Lots of sensors and actuators have their own little control unit, letting aside things like the gearbox, the airbags etc.I'd still think though that Windows's complexity with all the subsystems, drivers and what not will be magnitudes above all the stuff in a normal modern car combined.

author: CatalinaWOW
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 02, 2020, 07:48:39 pm
content: Quote from: 0xdeadbeef on June 02, 2020, 06:34:45 pmYou misunderstand me. I am saying that in some sense mechanical systems are more complex because they have a more complex environment and more complex choices. I would agree with your estimates of slocs for both cars and windows.

author: mc172
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 02, 2020, 08:06:19 pm
content: Don't forget the incredible complexity involved in designing the parts themselves, rather than just the software. The crankshaft, the fuel pump, the headlights, the housing for the ECU... Etc.

author: Syntax Error
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 02, 2020, 09:05:43 pm
content: Perhaps another question is, which part of a car does not require an operating system? Just about everything from the oil flow sensor to the courtesy lightsubsystemis chattering away on the CAN bus. Name one device in a modern vehicle that does not require a bootloader/RTOS to function? Just one device youcanfix with a multimeter rather than spending a really expensive diagnostic day/week plugged into somecustomer care service center, trying to figure out why the cruise control only works when the parking brake is engaged?Fix it? It's your software mate.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 02, 2020, 09:14:56 pm
content: Quote from: Rerouter on June 02, 2020, 11:13:30 amIt seems crazy that modern ECUs would have a 256MB ROM, the ECU in my car has a 4K ROM.Those infotainment systems are garbage, integrating tech with a 2-4 year life cycle into an expensive machine with a 15-30 year life cycle is ludicrous. Personally when I'm driving a car I'm *driving* the car and nothing else, if I want music I've got a thumb drive full of MP3s that I can plug into my head unit. Virtually everybody on the planet already has a smartphone these days, if auto makers want to include some sort of infotainment then just provide a nice integrated cubby in the dash with a clip to hold a phone with a USB socket for charging and BT receiver in the stereo. No infotainment system can ever hope to keep up with smartphones, every one of those systems will be woefully dated and obsolete a decade or more before the car is worn out.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 02, 2020, 09:18:02 pm
content: Quote from: Syntax Error on June 02, 2020, 09:05:43 pmThe battery?Windshield washer pump, light bulbs, a few other things, not a whole lot though.So far I've never owned a car newer than 1990 and I doubt I'll ever have anything newer than early 2000's unless I just get some beater to get me around at some point. They're all crap now, nothing has piqued my interest in the least, especially now that I hardly ever drive anymore.

author: MK14
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 02, 2020, 09:38:32 pm
content: Quote from: daqq on June 02, 2020, 10:55:41 am{Quote changed to title, to make it brief}There are some (relatively) rough and ready techniques/tricks, to guage (technical) complexity.One method, is to go back in time, and see when a 'modern' version, of the item in question. First (significantly), appeared on the market.E.g. In 1971, the Microprocessor first appeared on the market (opinions sometimes vary on the exact dates/years and which was the first one).So, for the modern day car, I guess you would be talking around the mid-1990s (opinions, can easily vary).For the modern day operating systems (windows was highlighted by the OP), I would say around the mid-1990s, windows was somewhat modern like.So, I'd (very approximately), call it a tie.

author: Mr. Scram
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 02, 2020, 09:43:19 pm
content: Quote from: MK14 on June 02, 2020, 09:38:32 pmWhy would you say the modern car appeared in the 90s? I'd have said the 30s perhaps, or 50s or early 60s. The 90s feels completely arbitrary as almost all the development back then was iterative.

author: Mr. Scram
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 02, 2020, 09:45:56 pm
content: Quote from: james_s on June 02, 2020, 09:18:02 pmYou absolutely positively have to mention this at the slightest provocation, don't you?

author: MK14
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 02, 2020, 09:51:20 pm
content: Quote from: Mr. Scram on June 02, 2020, 09:43:19 pmWell, let's take it stage by stage.1990 (approx) DOS = NOT windows like.Early windows = Blocky graphics (in my opinion), and not very good or stable/useful.So, around Windows95 (roughly 1995), it was somewhat useful/stable and good.Cars. I took a modern day car, to mean many all around air-bags, computerised engine/auto-box management, lots of electronic/computer bits. Relatively reliable/efficient engine. Etc etc.Hence 1995. A bit sooner, if you go for very expensive cars, and a bit later, for very cheap ones.

author: Mr. Scram
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 02, 2020, 10:06:52 pm
content: Quote from: MK14 on June 02, 2020, 09:51:20 pmTo me picking the 90s feels wholly arbitrary. Historically there are various points at which vehicle design paradigms changed or shifted significantly. The 90s are not one of those points. Car were just refined gradually in that era. That's almost the complete opposite from computer technology which was going through a crazy phase in the 90s. I'm just a bit confused by your pick because it's almost the exact opposite of what I'd have picked or even considered.

author: MK14
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 02, 2020, 10:22:31 pm
content: Quote from: Mr. Scram on June 02, 2020, 10:06:52 pmI agree. It is rather Cherry-picked/arbitrary.A 1960s car, can actually be quite good. But, a 1960s operating system, is not really comparable to Windows 10.So, you could take a genuinely 1960s restored car, and drive it 500 miles on modern roads, in reasonable speed/convenience and quite enjoy the experience.Whereas, a 1960s Operating System, Might struggle playing a 4K Graphics game, as it was probably expecting a serial crt text display unit, or even an ASR model 33, 10 characters per second, printing terminal.Also, if the game is 8GBytes in size, I wonder how long it will take to load, via the ASR33's, 10 char per second (approx), paper tape reader ?

author: T3sl4co1l
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 02, 2020, 10:39:50 pm
content: 90s is arbitrary; Xerox Alto was 70s and already did everything Windows and Mac did (give or take performance, UI design, and most of all, cost!). And that in turn was influenced by Engelbart's production in the 60s (which, as far as I know, was a one-off and would've been quite expensive to equip, stage and produce, but as you can see, was eminentlypossiblewith period technology).I don't know that there was a comparable breakthrough in ICE design, say; but I am far from an expert on the history. Perhaps fuel injection would be a similarly foundational step? But then, that's been done in some capacity since Diesel in the 1890s. And turbo and superchargers have been around about as long. It's really just been a slow and tedious, incremental improvement over the years, punctuated by various research steps that succeeded (and numerous others that didn't pan out into production).It seems more appropriate to compare the fundamental invention of the ICE to the invention of, say, the vacuum tube. See, thing is this: electronics has benefited from truly exponential growth over the years, while absolutely nothing comparable can be said of the ICE -- the laws of thermodynamics themselves prohibit exponential growth in that space, after all. Engines can get smaller and denser, absolutely; they can get more reliable; but only incrementally more efficient, up to the limit.Or likewise for materials science and fabrication, for all the mechanical components in a car -- these are incrementally improved, year by year, but once the major discoveries were made -- lightweight aluminum, high strength alloy steel, etc. -- there is again only so much improvement that is possible. (Carbon fiber is probably the next biggest improvement in that space, and it has gotten a lot cheaper over the years.)Tim

author: 0xdeadbeef
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 02, 2020, 10:44:11 pm
content: Quote from: james_s on June 02, 2020, 09:14:56 pmI don't think there is any gasoline/diesel car with an engine control unit with more than a few MB of (flash) ROM. The absolute high end in developman right now and going into production in 2023 or so has around 8MB of flash.And quite a bit of that is used for one or two dimensional calibration maps (most of the complex calculations are replaced by loop up tables and interpolation due to realtime requirements etc.)Anyway, 4K seems very low even for a very old car. When I started in the industry >20years ago, the ECUs in development used something like 128k to 512k flash. Why that increased to 2-8MB in the last twenty years is easy to explain: mainly due to regulations regarding exhaust emissions and safety.

author: SparkyFX
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 03, 2020, 01:28:40 am
content: The problem is in the definition what constitutes an OS and if this is seen from the side of the result or from the side of the process.If you read about how/under which circumstances the first OS were developed, there was not much hardware resources to work from. Of course a modern car would beat that in complexity several times.Then there is this: an OS is the compiled result of a process and that result can be copied lossless. To produce a car the processes are a lot more complex to get one copy. The sum of the tooling alone would beat complexity.

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 03, 2020, 02:41:08 am
content: Quote from: schmitt trigger on June 02, 2020, 05:11:58 pmThe gearsets in a DCT are surprisingly simple - more or less a pair of manual transmissions with one handling the even gears and the other the odd gears. The complex part is the control system to smoothly switch between the two. Apparently, that's the most common cause of failure in some early DCTs.Then there are CVTs which can be very simple mechanically, especially Toyota CVTs.

author: CatalinaWOW
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 03, 2020, 04:21:11 am
content: Quote from: NiHaoMike on June 03, 2020, 02:41:08 amCVT is a great example. They are conceptually extremely simple. Four cones and a belt. With infinite gear ratios they are absolutely ideal for matching the power band of an engine to current driving conditions. At least that is the theory. The devil is in the details, and the fact that this perfect solution is relatively rarely used in production vehicles indicates that there is some real "complexity" to implementation.An analogy for the purely electronic among us is a buck configuration switching power supply. An electronic switch. It is always either on or off so no power is dissipated in the switch. And then a simple capacitor to smooth the output. What could be simpler? But when it becomes time to actually implement one and get close to that theoretically perfect concept there are a myriad of details to get right.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 03, 2020, 05:14:04 am
content: Quote from: Mr. Scram on June 02, 2020, 09:45:56 pmYou absolutely positively have to chime in every single time don't you?

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 03, 2020, 05:17:53 am
content: Quote from: CatalinaWOW on June 03, 2020, 04:21:11 amCVTs are shit, my friend has one in some kinds of strange looking thing, Nissan I think. It failed at around 70k miles and cost a fortune to fix. She's not alone either, the forums are full of people having problems with them. Then there is the driving experience, they either feel just plain weird and disconcerting, and sound like something is very wrong when they are working properly, or the computer has been programmed to mimic the discrete shifts like a conventional transmission. It's one of those ideas that sounds good on paper but in practice it is garbage, at least it has been in the 3 or 4 cars I've driven that had one.If I can't get a proper manual gearbox with 3 pedals I'm not buying. This is not negotiable.

author: JPortici
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 03, 2020, 06:11:41 am
content: Quote from: james_s on June 02, 2020, 09:14:56 pmWell, this is what you have in mid/higher end cars since about 2017 (Class A, Class C, A4, A6, A7, A8 i think also Series5, Series 7)https://www.st.com/content/st_com/en/landing-page/stellar-32-bit-automotive-mcus.html?icmp=tt10612_gl_pron_feb2019absolutely crazy.I don't remember the bosch code for the ECU but it is also CRAZY big with about 250-300 pin connectors. You could see it open at ST's stand 2 years ago at embedded world, i have the photo somewhere.. I also agree with you on modern cars - in part. I'm 100% happy with my current 2014 skoda octavia. Good engine, manual gear,KNOBS AND BUTTONSinstead of a stupid touchscreen. It lacks LED lights -and no approved conversion kit -and i kind of wish i had an android auto radio but nog going to spend 2k for thatThe best balance in electronics in cars was around 2015 IMHO. The only new car i would get today would be (again) a Fiat, Alfa or a Jeep, they are the only ones i still feel like i am the one who's driving. In many other brands i find the elecronics to be too intrusive. And fiat's is the best infotainment IMHOMaybe i'll change the idea when the all touchscreen fad will go away.. no more than four years i think?

author: Rerouter
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 03, 2020, 07:27:34 am
content: Trucks and buses tend to have the stupidly large ROM images. As they bake in a lot of optional extras. Including things like blackbox features that have data going back to the last service.

author: MK14
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 03, 2020, 08:51:04 am
content: Quote from: T3sl4co1l on June 02, 2020, 10:39:50 pmThe thing is, you seem to be referring to the years, when something was first invented. But first inventing something and/or demoing a (potentially very) simplistic version of it. Is not the same as being able to (economically), go to mass market with it.E.g. Take the humble transistor.The original (1947+) ones, were hand-made, (I'm not an expert on Ge transistors, so could easily be mistaken) Germanium (which didn't seem to make the best of transistors), too expensive (1947+), not really mass-produced (in a big way). Relatively unreliable (1947+), subject to significant thermal runaway problems. Not suitable for higher voltages, higher currents were tricky and max power dissipation was not brilliant (1947+).They also couldn't cope with much temperature, and would exhibit considerable change in parameters, as the temperature changes.So, many significant inventions in the transistor world, had to occur, such as Silicon, and various improvements to the manufacturability of them. Took place.Then it took time for new 'transistorised' circuit designs to be made (developed/invented).Finally, they had to displace (compete with), the existing valve/tube market players.So, although technically speaking, the transistor was invented around 1947 (even that is not agreed by everyone, as there may have been other, relevant inventions, much earlier).It took a number of decades, for them to become commonplace.Perhaps (opinions can vary), from around 1970 (I know there was transistor items, especially radios in the 50s, and the 60s, had a number of transistorised items, hit the market) onwards, in most things. The transistors really took off.One could perhaps argue, it took the invention of the integrated circuit, to see transistors really succeed.I.e. As regards the windows like OS. (Xerox Alto etc). I doubt it was ready in that form to hit the mass market. Affordable, reasonably powerful computers needed to be invented (especially cpus, graphics and memory).Hard/floppy disks needed to be improved, and made cheaper/smaller.Then the entire windows eco-system, had to be created, along with a number of key software applications.That would have taken quite some time.So, yes. In e.g. 70s, you could have seen a DEMO of something windows like. It was NOT a product, that could have been released in e.g. 1971.1971 = Memory prices HUGE, just for 1K of semiconductor ram (dram I think).1971 = 4 bit, 100,000 instructions per second, max memory space 4K, Intel 4004 cpu. (I'm sure windows 10 could fit inside 4K of address space, with a tiny bit of optimisation. N.B. I'm never sarcastic).1971 = Looking at Mainframe, higher capacity (but still small by today's standards), hard disks. They were huge items, the size of washing machines. Presumably cost millions of dollars. I.e. not really ready to hit the mass market.tl;drPost getting too long. Although 90s is arbitrary, it probably wasn't viable for it to be that much sooner, than it was. E.g. 1971, as shown above. As the stuff wasn't available then and/or was too expensive for the mass market.

author: newbrain
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 03, 2020, 02:10:43 pm
content: Quote from: themadhippy on June 02, 2020, 05:14:16 pmAbout point 1:In the meantime, I had 2 car failures.About 13: that's exactly what I do on my car (and have been doing for 15 years...).

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 03, 2020, 02:39:47 pm
content: Quote from: newbrain on June 03, 2020, 02:10:43 pmWell, on mine too.And on cars that don't have Start/stop buttons, but just an ignition key, starting and stopping the engine is also done actioning the same key. What's the problem?Oh, and most ON/OFF buttons on most devices also combine switching it on and... off.I've always found this one "argument" (very popular silly nitpick about the Windows Start button for like ever) completely off. The Start "button" in Windows gave access to the "Start" menu - from which you could pretty much control the whole computer, including switching it off. It's a rather consistent approach. The "start" button in Windows was never meant to "start" the computer itself anyway (how could it), but to act as a "starting point" for most tasks. Anyway.

author: capacitor_explosion
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: June 03, 2020, 04:20:39 pm
content: As far as im aware the modern car the software is +1-100 milion lines of code . Even on low-end to mid-end cars have 20+ ECUs working and comunicating at the same time. The number of ECUs is growing all the time: not only because of safety and emissions reduction but, lately, because of the need of the car to be "connected". But that comes with a cost more lines of code = more bugs and problems down the road .

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 03, 2020, 06:29:59 pm
content: Quote from: JPortici on June 03, 2020, 06:11:41 amMy friend has a Skoda Octavia, 2009 I think, TDI engine, he's been pretty happy with it. In recent years though he's had an issue where it will crank but won't start after it's been driven. For example it'll fire up just fine at home, then he drives to the store to buy groceries and it won't start.I think mid 90s-early 2000's was kind of the golden era in many ways. Cars by then had all the creature comforts I care about but hadn't started to get bloated and they still largely had real buttons and switches. They had started to transition from nice clean lines to weird rounded bubbly shapes both inside and out though and I still much prefer straight lines, clean angles and a more industrial design. My favorite examples are aircraft, they don't follow silly styling fads and are almost purely form over function. The cockpit in a modern airliner looks a lot like the cockpit in a 1950s airliner aside from analog gauges being replaced by "glass cockpit" digital representations. The layout and overall design are mature, the problem was solved decades ago and they don't keep making arbitrary changes just to make it look new.

author: Fredderic
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: June 04, 2020, 02:41:35 am
content: Quote from: SiliconWizard on June 03, 2020, 02:39:47 pmThe start button in Windows for shutting off the computer, is a little different though.It's a little more obvious in Linux, where you shut down the computer by running the "shutdown" command (or one of it's variants) on a commandline (and I'm pretty certain the GUIs still do it by invoking those same commands — Linux likes that, because it lets you substitute a different command/system/whatever to suit your needs). But Windows is essentially the same. You are, in fact, "starting" the process that orchestrates the system shutdown on your behalf.Also, I'm pretty sure I recall way back when the Windows start button was first introduced, itwasspecifically being presented as the "starting point" for doing things with your system. But yeah, in pretty much all the major OS's, you are quite literallystarting the shutting down of the system.I'm not sure the same can really be said for cars… Yet. Although computer-on-wheels models like Tesla, quite possibly… Assuming they do still even actually shut off at all… "Starting the engine" for an all electric vehicle, seems like a dubious proposition to begin with.

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 04, 2020, 03:59:45 am
content: Quote from: james_s on June 03, 2020, 05:17:53 amToyota has a simpler, more reliable design for a CVT based around a planetary gearset and two motors. The complexity is in the electronics - looking at a control board for one of those, there are two ASICs with a 4MB SPI ROM next to one of them, two motor control ADCs, and the remainder of the board are various logic power supplies and CAN bus transceivers. Funny thing is, I bought the whole assembly for cheap so I could convert the motor inverters into a solar inverter, which involves replacing the control board with a FPGA. I wouldn't be surprised if there's enough flexibility built into the ASICs to theoretically allow them to be reprogrammed to do exactly what I want, but the intentional lack of documentation would make that a lot more difficult than just putting in a FPGA.

author: Neilm
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 05, 2020, 05:45:36 pm
content: I drive a Tesla, so I can't tell the difference between the two