Ford's new engine control module will be based on Motorola's PowerPC 500 Series RISC CPU. The bulk of the software that runs on the controller will be written in C. The engine control module performs two basic functions: It controls the fuel injection system to maximize combustion efficiency and boost fuel economy; and it regulates exhaust emissions to ensure compliance with federal and state emissions standards.

The fuel injection system is controlled by monitoring the mass air flow rate, adjusting for environmental parameters such as humidity and elevation, and then using this information to determine the amount of fuel that is sprayed by the fuel injection system into the carburetor and to fire the spark plugs. Emission control is handled by sensing emissions in the exhaust and using that information to adjust the exhaust gas recirculation and fuel injection.

Remarked Green Hills President Dan O'Dowd, "Keeping pace with the increased demand for performance, fuel economy, and emissions efficiency in today's automobiles requires increasingly sophisticated engine control systems. Upping the ante is the need to provide this control and make adjustments on the fly with ever increasing granularity."

"The PowerPC 500 Series," added O'Dowd, "provides the raw performance needed to meet the compute demands of these controllers. Green Hills' MULTI environment and optimizing C compiler give large development teams the integrated toolkit needed to quickly produce compact, efficient code that takes full advantage of the PowerPC's available MIPS."

Green Hills' MULTI Development Environment and optimizing compilers address all aspects of embedded software development. The heart of the MULTI environment is an RTOS-aware source-level debugger, which supports mixed assembly and high-level language formats and features process- and system-level debug capabilities. MULTI also includes a run-time error checker that detects memory leaks and common program faults, a profiler that helps programmers identify hot spots by providing program run-time data on a function-by-function and line-by-line basis, a fully-configurable windowing editor that features scroll bars, pull-down menus, and buttons for common commands, and a project/version control system that simplifies the design of large projects.

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