Agilent, Mentor team on automotive network design

Agilent Technologies Inc. announced a strategic partnership with Mentor Graphics, under which Agilent will license certain products in the Mentor Volcano product line to help automotive engineers develop electronic products faster and under budget while meeting quality requirements.

The partnership allows Agilent to provide a more complete solution for automotive customers with test and validation tools beyond the PHY up to the protocol layer, addressing the increasing complexity of the vehicle network topology and the need for higher network bandwidth and higher reliability.

In addition, the Mentor workflow allows an engineer to design a vehicle network to correctness by capturing and validating high-level requirements in the early design phase, and then automate the generation of the communication matrix. This enables a predictable and guaranteed data communications implemented by embedded software. Customers using the Mentor vehicle network design tools with the Agilent Tester will get immediate validation results.

"Mentor Graphics' extensive vehicle protocol analysis and node emulation products complement Agilent's leading physical layer test tools," said Roland Jeutter, automotive business manager at Agilent Technologies Germany. "Customers using Mentor Graphics' vehicle network design tools with the Agilent test and validation products will be able to easily verify complex signal chains and network/signal timings."

"Our partnership with Agilent allows us to focus on our core competencies, the network and electronic design tool and embedded software for AUTOSAR and beyond," said Joachim Langenwalter, director, automotive networking business unit at Mentor Graphics Germany. "With Agilent, the market leader in test and measurement solutions, our customers will gain a continuous flow combining the best technologies, from design thorough implementation all the way to test and validation, far beyond classical protocol test."