The Electronic control unit reference article from the English Wikipedia on 24-Apr-2004 (provided by Fixed Reference: snapshots of Wikipedia from wikipedia.org)

Electronic control unit

An Electronic Control Unit or ECU is an electronic device, basically a computer in an internal combustion engine that reads several sensors in the engine and takes care of fuel supply and ignition of the fuel/air mixture. An electronic control unit contains the hardware and software. The hardware is on a printed circuit board (PCB). The main component on this circuit board is a micro-controller chip. The software exists in other chips on the PCB, typically in EPROMs so the software can be re-programmed and updated. This is also referred to as an (electronic) Engine Management System.

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