Agilent Technologies' Partnership with Elektrobit Corp. Provides Complete Design, Test Toolset for FlexRay Automotive Networks
MUNICH, Germany, Productronica2007, Nov. 13, 2007, Hall A1, Booth 251 -- Agilent Technologies Inc. (NYSE: A) today announced a partnership to license certain automotive-network products in the Elektrobit Corp. (EB) (OMX: EBGV1) FlexRay product line, technology that EB gained as part of the DECOMSYS GmbH acquisition earlier this year. The cooperation will create an integrated design and test toolset for software and test engineers. Agilent also introduced a strengthened suite of FlexRay test product offerings. The Agilent Vehicle Protocol Tester Series 1000 -- derived from DECOMSYS::BUSDOCTOR 2 and DECOMSYS::VISION products -- allows automotive engineers to test and validate the robustness of their FlexRay network communication with market-leading protocol analysis and signal measurement capabilities. Agilent and EB already cooperate to provide FlexRay triggering and protocol-decode measurements in Agilent's MSO6000 oscilloscope. This partnership now extends Agilent's FlexRay test offering with leading FlexRay protocol analysis products: * Agilent now provides vehicle network communication test tools for all major protocols ranging from LIN and CAN to FlexRay, addressing the increasing complexity of the vehicle network topology and the need for higher network bandwidth and higher reliability. * EB continues to provide FlexRay and CAN measurement and cluster emulation products and will extend these solutions with ECU software analysis and debugging functions. These products will reduce the development complexity for the ECU software developer. * EB and Agilent will share FlexRay technology and software components, assuring the compatibility of data formats in the design and validation process. Customers using EB's FlexRay software design tools in conjunction with Agilent's FlexRay communication test tools benefit from a consistent design flow. "Agilent now provides test and measurement solutions for automotive networks starting from the physical layer through the protocol layer up to the system level," said Roland Jeutter, automotive business manager at Agilent. "This addresses all network-specific test and validation challenges by offering complete and consistent protocol insight. Our partnership with EB completes our portfolio of vehicle protocol test products with FlexRay, and offers our common customers a consistent and better integrated design and validation process." "EB is excited about this cooperation with Agilent, as through this agreement now a much broader customer base can benefit from our market-leading FlexRay technology," said Martin Schleicher, director Products and Platforms at EB Automotive. "Agilent is a perfect partner as both companies' products are complementary, allowing EB and Agilent to provide a complete offering of FlexRay networks -- from signal level to ECU software analysis. The DECOMSYS FlexRay and CAN measurement products will be integrated into EB's tresos product family under the name EB tresos Inspector." Agilent's strengthened FlexRay test product offering includes: * The Agilent Vehicle Protocol Tester Series 1000 (VPT1000), which has intuitive PC software that provides unique FlexRay protocol analysis, single-click signal insight and programmable fault injection, complemented by highly sophisticated standalone data logging. The VPT1000 has two FlexRay, two CAN interfaces, analog inputs and digital I/Os. * The VPT1000 together with the Agilent MSO6000 oscilloscope provides the leading time-correlated slot/segment boundary display of the global FlexRay timing schedule on an oscilloscope. * The Agilent MSO8000 oscilloscope offers real-time FlexRay eye-diagrams and jitter measurements with sophisticated signal integrity failure analysis mechanisms of the electrical FlexRay bus. U.S. Pricing and Availability The Agilent J8130A Vehicle Protocol Tester Series 1000 is available now. Pricing for typical configurations consisting of the hardware module only start at $5,500. Combined with the PC software, the product pricing starts at $10,900. More information about Agilent's automotive protocol test offering is available at www.agilent.com/find/automotive-network.