MOST celebrates major milestone with 100 car models adopted worldwide

HAUPPAUGE, USA: SMSC, a leading semiconductor company creating valued connectivity ecosystems, announced that the Media Oriented Systems Transport (MOST) technology, the de facto standard for high bandwidth infotainment networking in the car, is now on the road in 100 car models worldwide.

This significant achievement was nine years in the making with the first MOST model introduced in Europe in 2001. As the robust and reliable nature of the MOST architecture gained visibility in the automotive environment, the technology was next adopted in 2007 in the Asian market.

Today, there are 22 MOST models manufactured by Asia car makers, with the balance serving European OEMs. The next step of the roll out of MOST is occurring with the adoption by international high-volume brands.

For example, Volkswagen publicly announced that it will roll MOST out in all car platforms of their various brands. Other adopters are also preparing their roll out of MOST. SMSC is the leading designer of silicon, network management software and tools that support the MOST network.

“We are pleased to join the members of the MOST Cooperation today in celebrating this important achievement as MOST continues its broad proliferation in cars manufactured around the world,” said Dr. Christian Thiel, VP and GM of SMSC's Automotive Information Systems group.

“Since 2001, SMSC has developed automotive networking solutions in support of the MOST technology. Less than a decade later, MOST is now adopted in approximately 12 percent of vehicles manufactured worldwide and growing. Its adopters represent almost 50 percent of current global light vehicle production. To put that into perspective, the proliferation of CAN in most car makers worldwide took approximately 20 years. MOST is just nine years along and already enjoys a broad adoption.”

The first MOST implementation, MOST25, was the first optical, high-bandwidth network for in-the-cab infotainment applications. It offered car designers a revolutionary means to seamlessly connect data and entertainment with speed and robustness that was at the time commercially unavailable.

The second generation, MOST50, was introduced in 2006 in an unshielded twisted pair/copper configuration, delivering a 25 Mbit/second speed enhancement with a plug-in, component approach to the networking implementation. The latest generation, MOST150, offers a cost-efficient way to transfer content at 150 Mbps via an isochronous transport mechanism that supports extensive video applications and an embedded Ethernet channel for efficient transport of IP-based packet data.

MOST technology is designed to be environmentally sustainable, reducing weight and electrostatic interference, and has been adopted in 10 hybrid vehicles to date.