A busy week for Mentor

Mentor made significant announcements during a well-attended IESF in suburban Detroit.  Its Capital® tool suite has been accredited to IBM’s “Ready for IBM Rational” program, which validates integrations between IBM’s Rational Software Delivery Platform and adjacent applications, promising seamless interoperability.

(In his IESF presentation, Paul Hansen, editor and publisher of the Hansen Report on Automotive Electronics, cited development tools interoperability as one of the industry’s most significant trends. Cloud computing is the other).

Mentor’s Capital tool suite for electrical systems design is now integrated with IBM’s Rational Team Concert (RTC) project management environment, all the better to manage design change.

“Design change is a daily event in the electrical domain,” said Mentor Integrated Electrical Systems Division general manager Martin O’Brien,. “Capital has very powerful design change management capabilities, and this integration allows direct linkage with the Rational project management environment. Digital continuity is created between the project manager and the engineers implementing their assigned tasks, maximizing visibility and minimizing the potential for errors. We recognize the power of collaboration platforms as best-in-class technology to achieve tool and data.”

Mentor also announced a GENIVI 2.0-compliant, Linux®-based In-Vehicle Infotainment (IVI) Solution for which target hardware support includes Sabre and SabreLite IVI products from Freescale Semiconductor. ADIT, a joint venture of Robert Bosch Car Multimedia GmbH and DENSO Corporation, selected Mentor as a partner to develop a GENIVI 2.0-compliant software platform. “We chose to work with Mentor due to their active participation in GENIVI and availability of GENIVI-based standard product portfolio, plus Mentor’s extensive experience in Open Source consumer electronics software product development,” said Dr. Wilhelm Grabow, ADIT managing director.

Earlier in the week Mentor announced a design win: Simco, Ltd., which develops gauges and instrument clusters, used Embedded HMI Inflexion to develop a next-generation screen-based instrument cluster.

Preparing Recommendations

Besides all that, the editors of Automotive Engineering International (AEI) selected Mentor’s Capital® Harness™ MPM product to receive a “most innovative supplier technologies” award.

“Wire harnesses are high-cost components within modern automobiles, so harness manufacturers constantly search for improved efficiency. With Capital Harness MPM, Mentor Graphics delivers powerful new technology that will make a genuine impact to harness manufacturing engineering. It is this combination of technology and utility that resulted in AEI singling out Mentor for this prestigious award,” said AEI editorial director Kevin Jost.