Method for operating an electronic control unit during a calibration phase
AssigneeMagneti Marelli S.p.A.
InventorsDaniele Garofalo, Roberto Valacca, Paolo Marceca
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A method for operating an electronic control unit during a calibration phase; the method contemplating the steps of: dividing an area of a FLASH storage memory connected to a microprocessor in two pages between them identical and redundant, each of which is aimed at storing all the calibration parameters used by a control software; and using the two pages alternatively so that a first page contains the values of the calibration parameters and is queried by the microprocessor, while a second page is cleared and made available to store the updated values of the calibration parameters.
Claims13
1) A method for operating an electronic control unit during a calibration phase;
- the method comprises the steps of:
- dividing an area of a FLASH storage memory connected to a microprocessor in two pages between them identical and redundant, each of which is aimed at storing all the calibration parameters used by a control software;
- having the two pages on two different read-while-write partitions so that the first page can be read while the other page is written and vice versa;
- using the two pages alternately;
- and
- initially storing all the calibration parameters on a first page, which is read-queried by a microprocessor;
- the method is wherein it comprises the further steps of:
- clearing a second page so that it is empty and available;
- when a modification of the calibration parameters is needed and while the microprocessor keeps read-querying only the first page, copying the entire content of the first page on the second page changing during said copying the calibration parameters so that the calibration parameters written on the second page contain the modification;
- after copying, having the microprocessor query only the second page instead of the first page to make the microprocessor use the calibration parameters containing the modification;
- clearing, after copying, the first page so that it is empty and available;
- and
- repeating, when a further modification of the calibration parameters is needed, the steps described above, reversing the roles of the two pages so that the calibration parameters containing the further modification are copied onto the first page while the microprocessor continues to read-query only the second page.
10) A method for operating one electronic control unit during a calibration phase;
- the electronic control unity comprises a microprocessor, a working SRAM memory, and a FLASH storage memory that normally contains a control software and the values of the calibration parameters used by the control software;
- the method comprises the steps of:
- adding, only during the calibration phase, to the electronic control unit an additional SRAM memory, which is sized to hold the values of the calibration parameters and is used;
- using, only during the calibration phase, the additional SRAM memory to hold the values of the calibration parameters, and
- connecting to a microprocessor of the electronic control unit an external computer via a communication line that operates on a synchronous serial communication standard such as “SPI” to read/write access to additional SRAM memory.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.