AUTOSAR and FlexRay: A Tale of Two Standards

The emerging automotive design software standard known as AUTOSAR (Automotive Open System Architecture) began as the product of an industry-wide effort among European auto makers and their suppliers. Its objectives are similar to those of software standards in other industries: to bring structure, clean interfaces and implicit methodologies to a process—in this case, the design of distributed systems within automobiles. FlexRay is a serial bus communication standard that has evolved over roughly the same time span as AUTOSAR. FlexRay came into existence as a solution for the shortcomings of the prevailing automotive bus standards, particularly the CAN protocol.