Supported Siemens ECU Families
The registry currently covers 6 families of Siemens engine-management ECUs, spanning from 1995 to 2010. These ECUs were originally produced by Siemens Automotive and later marketed under the Siemens VDO and Continental brands following the 2007 acquisition — you may see any of these names used interchangeably in the tuning community.
The registry is designed to be extended — new manufacturers and families can be added without touching existing code. See CONTRIBUTING.md for details.
Family reference
| Family | Era | File sizes | Vehicles & applications |
|---|---|---|---|
| Simtec 56 | 1995–2002 | 128 KB | Opel/Vauxhall Vectra B, Astra, Omega B, Calibra (X18XE, X20XEV engines) |
| SIMOS | 1998–2006 | 131 KB, 262 KB, 524 KB | VW/Audi/Skoda/Seat 1.4–1.6L petrol (Golf 4, Bora, Beetle, Fabia, Octavia, Leon) |
| PPD1.x | 2003–2008 | 250 KB – 2 MB | VW/Audi/Skoda/Seat 2.0 TDI Pumpe-Düse diesel (PPD1.1, PPD1.2, PPD1.5) |
| SID 801 / SID 801A | 2001–2006 | 512 KB | Peugeot/Citroën 2.0/2.2 HDi diesel (307, 406, Partner) |
| SID 803 / SID 803A | 2005–2010 | 458 KB – 2 MB | Peugeot/Citroën 2.0/2.2 HDi diesel (407, 607, C5) |
| EMS2000 | 1996–2004 | 256 KB | Volvo S40/V40/S60/S70/V70 T4/T5 turbo petrol |
Confidence scoring
Every identification result includes a confidence tier so you know how much to trust the match. A High result means the file has strong, unambiguous identification signals; a Low or Suspicious result means you should double-check before relying on it.
| Tier | Meaning |
|---|---|
| High | File looks factory-fresh — strong identification signals present |
| Medium | Identified with reasonable certainty — some signals missing |
| Low | Partial identification — treat with caution |
| Suspicious | Signals conflict or appear tampered — inspect manually |
| Unknown | No extractor matched — file may not be a supported ECU binary |
Note on "dark" bins: Some Siemens families — notably SIMOS and EMS2000 — produce bins with minimal embedded metadata (no clear ASCII part numbers, no obvious calibration ID strings). These "dark" bins make fingerprinting harder, so expect confidence scores to trend toward Medium or Low even for genuine, untouched files. The extractors compensate by relying more heavily on file-size heuristics and binary structure patterns, but the reduced signal density means there is less room for a High confidence match compared to more verbose families like PPD1.x or SID 80x.
For a full breakdown of how scores are calculated, see Confidence Scoring.
Adding a new family
The registry is designed so new manufacturers and families can be added without touching existing code. See CONTRIBUTING.md for a step-by-step guide.
Technical reference
For extractor internals, detection strategies, and OEM-specific format notes, see Siemens Internals.