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Microsoft to Supply Electronics to Formula 1
Yooden_Vranx writes "speedtv.com reports that beginning in 2008, Microsoft will be the sole supplier of Engine Control Units to Formula 1. Apparently, moving to a single supplier is part of the FIA's (Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile) attempts to cut costs.
The article does not clarify whether this cost reduction is enabled by cutting back on tech support, what percentage of the engine's power will be required to run all the 'features' embedded in the device, or whether 'crash' will now refer primarily to software behavior rather than driving incidents."
It would be interesting to get more tech specs. Would they even seriously consider running Windows on the main processor?
... far less opportunity for bugs and (pun) race conditions.
:-)
There is little or no value for an engine ECU like this to run an OS at all, the acme of simplicity in time and safety critcal software is a single hardcoded loop
Perhaps it will simply be a branding thing for MS, c.f. the McLaren "Mercedes" engine of a few years ago which was actually built by Ilmor and only ever entered Germany if there was a race there
The contract was awarded to Microsoft MES, not Microsoft Automotive. I believe MES is a joint venture with Siemens, the technology partner to Mclaren (The shiny silver cars, for those who don't follow racing. Philistines.). Since McLaren already supplies a good deal of motorsports electronic components, this isn't much of a surprise.
As a longtime F1 fan I am not surprised. The FIA (and Bernie and Max) have been out of touch with the needs of the sport for quite a while. The "cost-cutting" move to V8s from the nice V10s ended up costing a lot of money and angering the teams. They pushed out Michelin because Michelin wouldn't toe the line. They won't restructure the revenue stream to help the teams and then blame the teams for making the sport too expensive. They create the two race engine rule that reduces the spectacle for little cost saving. All while ignoring one of the biggest expenses: testing. It is so simple: take away in-season private testing, make Friday an open test day and have one engine for qualifying and race (don't get me started on how messed up qualifying is).
Serve Gonk.
MS has been active in the Automotive sector for quite some time now, and is one of the biggest players in the market. They have a full fledged Automotive Division, and some of their systems based on CE go into Fiat, Volvo and others I dont know.
So if you think they just jumped into it, well no. They've been there for a long time now. And seem to be doing quite well. This will buy them lots of publicity.
And anyway, safety on F1 cars are multiple times redundant and even if the software fails there is a mechanical framework protecting the driver. The software largely handles monitoring tasks, warnings and such.
Life is just a conviction.
Anyway, most would be using Open Source drivers etc and the actual application would be closed source (which is GPL-OK).
Even having open source engine management would not be that limiting. It's generally the configurations that are proprietary, rather than the actual control mechanisms.
WinCE (the likely MS choice) only works on a few CPUs and only in certain modes (eg. little endian only). Most F1 engine management are likely using things like MPC5200s running in big endian mode.
This all smells of hoax.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
http://atlasf1.autosport.com/ref/scrutiny.html
Safety is everything for Forumula One. Anything Microsoft writes will get inspected with fine tooth combs, then inspected again just to be sure.
The secondary reason behind their strict protocols is that it heads off cheating. No buried/hidden code that only activates in certain situations.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Windows CE is NOT a real-time operating system, no matter what Microsoft claim.
I'm much more apt to trust publications, case studies, and third party reviews than I am to trust an unsubstantiated claim.
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
I've tuned engines on racing cars. Firstly a little formula SAE racer, later V8 supercars.
Those Engine Control Units need to be bulletproof. And by bulletproof, I mean being able to handle being short circuited, reverse polarity applied, handle vibration, lots of heat, have weird settings applied, and generally being totally mistreated.
There are so many things that can go wrong on an engine, that to troubleshoot a problem you need to have 100% faith in the ECU. I don't mean 99.999%, I really do mean 100%! If there's a tiny little nagging doubt in your mind that the ECU might be at fault, then it throws your faultfinding completely out the window. Most of the time when there's a problem you need to fix it RIGHT NOW, normally this is at the start of a practice session, and the engineers want to get some tuning data for the suspension, the driver wants to practice the track, and every second of downtime means lots of stress for everyone in the team, including the manager and sponsorship guys. If you haven't worked in motorsport you have no idea what stress is all about. It's hardcore.
Why didn't they go with an established manufacturer such as MoTeC or Magneti Marelli? Those guys really know what's what when it comes to making an ECU.
I don't care how much experience or money Microsoft has, making a realtime OS for an ECU is no trivial matter. It's extremely difficult! You can't just whack a desktop OS like Windows CE or linux onto a small computer, things really and truly don't work like that. It will only take a couple of bugs before the engineers in F1 will be tearing their hair out, going on strike, and trying to retrofit their old ECUs into the cars. I really don't think that this idea will fly.
I am artificially intelligent.
More qualified still are the two companies (alongside Magnetti Marelli) which actually _do_ make ECUs for Formula 1 - TAG and Pi Research. (Bosch and Motec electronics get used in other formulae.) I'd add that Honda and Williams make their own ECUs. I've been out of the game for a few years now, though, so I'm not sure whether any other teams have started doing so.
Microsoft would have an awful lot of ground to make up if they really are planning to provide manufacture ECUs. I expect that the story is wrong, and that Microsoft are branding somebody else's product. Or, they are buying an existing company.
Don't forget that engine manufacturers can test engines over a complete race distance without ever leaving their labs, simply by mounting the engine in a controlled environment and then "replaying" a data recording of say, a race at Monza (usually a race with high engine attrition) several times. Any flaws in the ECU should become apparent rather quickly.
Ever wondered whats wrong with the world? http://www.ishmael.org/
F1 doesn't use ABS. It's banned.
All M$ bashing aside (which is why I expect this was posted to Slashdot), the ECU is not completely in Microsoft's hands. The project is a colloboration between Microsoft and Siemens called MES - the latter of which have a great deal of expertise in ECUs.
Because with digital engine management, you can (and do!) implement traction control, launch control, engine trimming and a whole bunch of other stuff right from the ECUs. Even cruise control can be done in-software.. my car does.
They tried banning TC not too long ago and had to put it back in -- because they had no way of policing TC-in-software. Everyone had it, but no one was using mechanical means. It was all in software.
Which is the whole point of Throttle By Wire -- the ECU talks to the engine, you talk to the ECU. The ECU may, or may not, like what you ask for, and will try to deliver as closely as possible what you asked for.
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
Actually, this was a manual boost controller. You can mail-order them for about fifty bucks.
More interesting is that some aircraft have a timing adjustment knob. Think it's running a little funny? Just tweak it. This is what predated automatic altitude compensation.
Even more interesting than that is the fact that a lot of ECUs let you tweak all kinds of things through a software interface. Nissan ECUs from about 1991 to 1995 (late model OBD-I) have a "CONSULT" port that's basically an externally clocked serial port, which will run up to about 19.2kbps. Using it, you can bump timing forward and backward in half-degree increments, increase or decrease fuel delivery by 5% increments, and make a bunch of other tweaks.
But anyway, no matter what year you're talking about, a wastegate with adjustment from the dashboard is not a stunning achievement. Wastegate adjustment consists of driving in a machine screw, or backing it out.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"