The Pi Shurlok PiAutoSim is a bench-top simulator designed for hardware-in-the-loop testing of automotive electronic control modules (ECM). The unit is used by car manufacturers to test ECMs without having to fasten the ECM to an engine. Engine models are created in software and used to test and validate the behavior of the ECM.

The simulator is capable of mimicking the behavior of the engine under normal running and stress conditions. The PiAutoSim* connects to the ECM under test and can generate and read a wide variety of analog and digital signals. Internally the PiAutoSim uses a real-time operating system running on dedicated embedded controllers.

This paper describes how upgrading to the latest multi-core Intel® architecture using the latest Intel® software tools leads to a significant performance gain.

The paper discusses how the VTune™ Performance Analyzer was used to sample and view the runtime behavior of the simulation. The simulation has hard real-time constraints, and using the optimization features of the Intel® C\C++ Compiler improves the performance of the relevant sections of code. One interesting challenge included how to best use the VTune™ analyzer and the Intel® Compiler in the embedded development environment. The paper describes the steps used to take full advantage of the new tools.