With the shift towards electrified and autonomous vehicles, there is an increasing transformation of the vehicle’s electric/electronic (E/E) architecture towards zonal controllers that offer centralised computing to control various functions of a car, global microelectronics and semiconductor systems giant Infineon Technologies has introduced its latest AURIX TC4x family of microcontrollers.
With the latest introduction, Infineon is geared to meet the automotive industry’s requirements of zonal architectures, with its advanced solution that offers power distribution, diagnosis and monitoring, gateway control, as well as power actuation – the key attributes of a zonal architecture.
The company’s transition from the earlier AURIX TC3x to TC4x family brings about capabilities such as performance enhancement, and versatility, offering rich connectivity features, as well as enhanced safety and security by conforming to the functional safety requirements such as ASIL-D functional safety, and symmetric and asymmetric cryptography.
While it has been a leader with its AURIX TC3x family of microcontrollers that runs at up to 6 cores, operating at 300MHz, and 16MB NVM (non-volatile memory), the TC4x, on the other hand, has a new 500MHz TriCore v1.8 setup, with up to 6/6 lockstep cores, and up to 24MB NVM. It also has data routing engines for CAN and Ethernet communication, as well as improved timers.
The new chip offers three hardware accelerators – CAN Routing Engine (CRE), Data Routing Engine (DRE), and Cyber Security Satellite (CSS). While the TC3 had a hardware security module, with the TC4x, the company has adopted a slightly different concept of cybersecurity real-time module for performance increase.
As per Infineon, the upgrade offers up to 15 times CSRM performance compared to the previous module, along with more stringent security standards such as the ISO 21434. This solves performance bottlenecks, and is post-quantum ready as well. The company says with the TC4x, it is future proofing with respect to cybersecurity standards.
With its new offering, Infineon is laying the ground for electric, intelligent, and connected cars of the future, and is strengthening its position as the most-preferred solutions provider for the automotive industry globally. The TC4x series fosters the trends of e-mobility, advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), automotive electric/electronic architectures, and affordable artificial intelligence (AI) applications.
The company says that the Infineon AURIX platform has become the first-choice automotive architecture for high-growth and safety-critical applications such as powertrain, safety, assisted and autonomous driving as well as domain or zone control. Given the growing vehicle complexity and the enablement of AI implementations, significant focus has been placed on the AURIX TC4x ecosystem to ensure fast time-to-market and ease-of-use.
With its scalable family concept, the AURIX is a key ingredient for dependable electronics and software-based applications. Consequently, demand and revenues for the AURIX microcontrollers are expected to grow strongly in the coming years. For instance, as per Infineon, a leading European car manufacturer is slated to have about 35 AURIX MCUs on-board a new car scheduled to be produced around the middle of this decade.
The new AURIX TC4x family supports both eMobility and the advancement of automated driving. It offers enhanced connectivity as well as advanced safety and security. Additionally, as per Infineon, new SOTA (Software Over the Air) features will help fulfil the demands of car manufacturers for fast and secure car-to-cloud connection, enabling updates in the field, plus diagnosis and analysis during vehicle usage.
More information on AURIX TC4x can be obtained from the product brochure.