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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."
This is a good chance for Microsoft to show off their embedded systems (Maybe WinCE? The article doesn't say.)
...). Microsoft wants new engine control technology developed on and tied into WinCE. When the time comes to transfer that to the production world, WinCE will come along with it.
Of course WinCE (it's their only embedded OS, not counting the XBOX OS and WinXP embedded). The real point of this exercise is to get Microsoft software in *production* automobiles. Technology developed or refined in F1 and other racing leagues often makes its way down to consumer vehicles (antilock brakes, stability control systems, variable valve timing, hydraulic clutch,
Having worked with WinCE, this is a very scary proposition. I'd be terrified of putting it on any device that doesn't have a RESET button (hmm, why do all WinCE phones have reset buttons but Symbian ones don't?). One can only imagine how much they paid the F1 people to "standardize" on a software platform that is individually and independently developed by each team/manufacturer.
It's painfully obvious if you step back and think a bit. They sell game software. Marketing, in it's usual tortured logic, sees an opportunity for tie-ins with racing gameware.
It's highly unlikely that Microsoft will actually source the parts - they'll just subcontract out the actual work and slap their name on it. It's no different than laser printers and many other tech in that sense.
Your point about how much they paid F-1 is VERY valid. Bernie Ecclestone who runs F1 (and pretty much what he says goes) is one more money-grubbing SOB. He wouldn't be bought easy though, I suspect it took M$ a couple hundred million to get the deal. The thing is there are several different engines in F1 and they need to be tuned for each track so the software has to be parameterized and quite flexible as each engine mfg may like to have a different chipset (Intel, AMD, PowerPC, etc) in the Engine Controller. Plus it has to transmit real-time telemetry for the teams to monitor the behavior of the on-board systems.
I have heard WinCE (which really is NOT the Windows we know and hate on the desktop..it's just a brand name) is not too bad. Personally, I would use VxWorks, embedded Linux, OS-9, or build my own before I would trust Redmonds' code. When you are dealing with a high tech engine that can rev 15000 RPMs and costs probably $200K I don't want a BSOD causing a blown engine. There are some pretty big corporate finances in F1 and they demand performance, failing to finish a F1 race due to a "software problem" will get some serious negative corporate attention. I recall when Ferrari introduced the first electronically controlled transmission and all the problems they had getting that right, it cost them a few races and lots of pressure to get it fixed. So maybe this will put some pressure on M$ to make the code better?? On second thought, nahh..they'll just ignore the problem and pay off the teams not to say bad things about the software.
MS aside, Formula One has had a huge problem keeping driver aids out of the sport. Driver aids do not belong in a series that is supposed to be the ultimate test of a driver.
The only series that has had any luck keeping driver aids out is NASCAR, because they don't allow any kind of tech (even fuel injection).
If this allows Formula 1 to get traction control, antilock brakes, launch control and other stuff out of F1, this will be a good thing.
I'm not sure if I believe it though. The excuse for allowing traction control was because they said they couldn't figure out how to keep it out. And yet I can see telemetry of the pedal position in the car, see the revs climb and even hear the TC cut in and out. It's simple. Monitor the telemetry and if the engine acceleration drops without the pedal moving, DQ the car.
Formula 1 is a shadow of its former self. It's still fast and expensive, but all passing is gone. And allowing tire changes during the race again just made the marbles problem much bigger, as anyone could have predicted, decreasing the passing even more.
Okay, that's enough. This isn't the right place to complain about this anyway.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
While I agree completely with all of your points (make Friday spectacular again!), I suspect what the FIA are trying to do is simplify some of their own procedures and reduce some of their costs. Currently all code on board an F1 car goes through pre- and post-race scrutineering just like every other part. Looking over the (compiled!) code for illegalities is a true nightmare.
:-)
Now imagine everyone is running ECU-OS 1.0 (ignoring all MS jokes for the time being)... The "OS" is exactly the same (i.e. it checksums to the same value) for all, only the various configuration parameters (held in RAM?) vary. Now the scrutineering effort becomes: hook up to ECU ROM, download code (or do a boundary scan), perform checksum. If the checksum isn't right - bang - you're disqualified.
To a lesser extent it will also save the teams some money. Rich teams might currently have 200 engine parameters that they can tweak. Poorer teams might have only been able to afford to develop 50. If everyone gets 100 parameters, it comes down to engineering quality rather than quantity to work out what works best.
Maybe...
Hmm. where is the time that the only requirement was that you could get your car down the track as fast as possible?
I think they overregulated formula 1. Too many restrictions on engine, fuel type, gearbox type, wing type, tire type, everything.
They should reinvent something like formula 0, with the only restriction of getting round the track as fast as possible.
B.
Every experiment which ends in a big bang is a good experiment.
"One of the nice beneits for F1 racing is that technology trickles down into mainstream cars after a decade or so."
Modern roadcars are already more advanced in the driving aids department than F1 cars, as an effort to increase the effect of the driver steering the car, all driving aids except for traction control were banned a while ago. ESP, EPM, whatever, aren't available in F1 and rightly so, I think, so I would not expect too big an influx from F1 into roadcar technology when it comes to electronics and / or software.
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All of which can be done on hardware w/ flash. The parent is completely right in that the addition of an OS can only harm the ECM. For the 2006 Formula SAE competition (think college level F1) our car had a radio transmiter which transmitted all of the pertinent data to a laptop including the telemetry, fuel and ignition lookup tables with A/F compensation. All of this was run from several ICs and a PIC microprocessor running things behind the scenes with some very simple code in comparisson to any OS. And, if you think that all of the above items are not important for modern street cars, think again. Aside from wireless telemetry and the speed in which data has to be processed, the control systems are much more complicated than that found on race cars.
Where I work at, we (not me, but the company) approached MS about getting windows Do-178B certified so as to be able to use in cockpits. After MS read the requirements they laughed us out of the office and told us that none of their OS can meet the conditions. Now we use Linux for the critical OSs.
As to the publicity, I suspect that you will never know if there was an issue. MS is bigger than governments economies. Few countries take them on. EU as a whole does, but most of the countries do not. Unless a death occurs, they can, and will see to it, that any issues from them do not get out.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
It's probably the best idea from a long term perspective on keeping track speeds in bounds. For those that think that it should be 'anything goes', think back to the GTP wars in the early 90's when Nissan ruled the roost... and then Dan Gurney brought out the Toyota Eagle with the turbo 2 liter engine that ran very high boost. It was nearly as fast (or faster) than Indy cars on the same track. The organizers kept on making Dan add weight, and they kept on winning. Then they started limiting tire sizes and still Dan kept winning. The point is that if they hadn't put any limits on that car (or on any race car that breaks new ground in handling or engine development) it would have been totally unbeatable except through unforeseen circumstances, unless a team were to spend a kazillion dollars to come up with the Next Better Thing. And it's not exciting (for most people) to watch a race where only two cars out of twenty have any chance at all of winning. On the other hand, NASCAR (with all it's mandated obsolescence) draws bigger crowds than anything except international football (soccer).
Less is more.
Have someone noticed how the western public (cannot tell about the rest of the world) has become more and more sensitive to "horrible accidents"?
In the old days, racing events that ended up with deaths, sometimes gruesome and very graphical (ground meat all around), were relatively common, as I can tell from watching F1 and WRC documentaries. And the public seemed to like it.
If you think that this was bad -- "sports should be safe for everyone" -- think for a moment that the pilots themselves might never have considered the inherent danger of their trade as "bad". Think on how many women the pilots could score when they told them they could die the next day. It's a typical James Bond-ish scenario, prevalent in the racing sports of the 50's and 60's. It is sexy, I won't deny it.
The last big racing accident I remember is Ayrton Senna's. It wasn't particularly gory (seems that a driving shaft pierced his skull through his helmet, but the helmet never came off until rescue arrived and the car was in one piece, no gory stuff scattered), but the media made it look worse.
In Brazil, that event took epic proportions. The country seemed to slow down for couple days, so they could follow the drama on TV. It was an interesting day for TV as well, since the official broadcasting had higher than usual ratings for that week. A week or so later, the body was brought back to Brazil for burial. The guy received official honors, the country was mourning the F1 pilot who was treated like a president (mostly TV-induced hype, that TV channel must have made a lot of money that year). Up to this date, there are private foundations dedicated to the cause of preserving his legacy for generations to come. Kids that barely remember who he was or how well he raced (it is controversial, IMO. I think his success was 95% his cars' in a time when racers clustered in two groups -- turbo and aspirated -- and, well, non-turbo cars never stood a chance and few teams had resources to turbocharge their cars. Just observe how Senna was never able to get an expressive result after FIA's ban on turbo cars.) cry when they visit the foundation's sponsored exhibits, an odd thing since they really do not remember crap about this guy and, for their existence, think that cellphones, broadband and wireless always existed since time immemorial.
Therefore, I think that, while the TV features more and more violence and gore, due to the same TV, the audience grew extremely sensitive to accidents due to the extreme spin TV (and modern media, to a lesser degree) gives to these incidents. People die every year in those super fast boat races, but nobody seems to care and it doesn't preclude the continuation of the sport.
Weird, huh?