In rummaging through information on diesels, I found some datapoints on hardware and software that helped me “size” the problem a bit better in my mind.

First, from Magneti Marelli, a global designer and producerof high-tech components and systems for the automotive industry, serving Renault, Citroën, Peugeot, Fiat Group, Ford, Volkswagen, Audi, Seat, BMW-Rover, DaimlerChrysler, GM-Opel, Volvo, Saab, Nissan, Toyota and Daewoo.

The total size of their System R&D group is 550 (at least as of a year or so ago). That’s a big development organization.

For the engine control systems on the diesel side, they currently are doing most of their work for GDI and Common Rail Diesels on embedded processors that range up to 35 MIPS (million instructions per second) and use between 110K to 160Kloc (Thousand (K) lines of code -- the size of the program controlling the activity). For the upcoming diesel platforms, they expect to be using processors up to 75 MIPS with 150-220Kloc.

As a comparison, the Intel 80486 processor (the predecessor to the Pentium) would have had approximately a 35 MIPS version around 1990. 75 MIPS is comparable to the first generation family of Pentium processors circa 1994.

BMW provides a supporting view. For its work on the 2^nd generation diesel launched in 2002 for the 730d and 740d models, BMW used a 32-bit 40MIPS onboard processor at the core of its diesel electronic control unit. Since BMW has just released its 3^rd generation diesel engine, I am assuming the processor power increased accordingly.

It’s probably possible to put together a complete atlas of code and processors for types of cars...perhaps that will begin to displace more mechanical metrics such as engine displacement as we go more electric.