Analysis
EEMBC and VOLKSWAGEN to Develop Benchmarking Standards to Quantify Microcontroller Energy Efficiency
The Embedded Microprocessor Benchmark Consortium (EEMBC) today announced an expanded working group project with the Volkswagen Group to establish an energy-efficiency benchmark for microcontrollers aimed at making automotive end products more energy aware and more robust.
WithWe’re pleased that Volkswagen is continuing its important leadership role with the consortium and look forward to the insight they and the working group will provide to help EEMBC define and create our next-generation automotive benchmark suite,” said EEMBC President Markus Levy. “Volkswagen has been a long-time leader in the automotive industry and as chair of this project, they will continue to provide inputs to ensure the real-world value of this benchmark and subsequent versions that will address increasing microcontroller complexity and robustness requirements. We also expect that Volkswagen’s participation will produce a roadmap for automotive and other end-market manufacturers to get involved with EEMBC to guarantee equitable and valuable benchmarks for their industry.”
“As a world leader in advanced automotive systems, Volkswagen is continuing to chair the EEMBC Automotive working group and lend its expertise to ensure that the new benchmark reflects real-world system-design conditions and leads to improved efficiency,” said Volkswagen’s head of electric and electronic development, Dr. Volkmar Tanneberger. “Following completion of this new benchmark suite, we will demand the Tier 1 suppliers and semiconductor vendors to provide results for the microcontrollers that will be integrated into the next generation of electronic modules.”
EEMBC’s first-generation automotive benchmark suite, AutoBench, was designed to focus on the CPU’s processing power, measuring the time required to complete specific algorithms. The new benchmark suite adds new tests to measure CPU performance while simultaneously monitoring peripherals and energy usage. Individual tests of the microcontroller measure the power consumption of the CPU and peripherals under various loads, the amount of time that it spends in low-power modes under various CPU/peripheral loads, and the time required to wake the MCU from its various low-power states to resume processing. Moreover, the working group will align this benchmark suite with the AUTOSAR development partnership, utilizing the Microcontroller Abstraction Layer (MCAL) to interface to the underlying microcontroller hardware.
This benchmark specification will be open to all world-wide car manufacturers and tier 1 suppliers, and EEMBC encourages everyone in the ecosystem to join the effort to develop subsequent phases of this benchmark.