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MCU family for safetycritical functions

Infineon has introduced the XC2300 family of microcontrollers aimed at safetycritical— but non-power-train— applications in the automotive sector, such as airbag and power-steering systems. Infineon describes the family as having 32-bit performance, although it based the devices around a new implementation of the 166, 16-bit core. Chips will be available at a wide range of performance points, from 66-MHz parts with 128 kbytes of flash memory (for airbags) to 80-MHz parts with 768 kbytes of flash, for power steering. Devices will be footprint-compatible over multiple variants to simplify upgrades; power demand isunder 60 mA at 80 MHz.

Introducing the new devices, Infi neon’s head of automotive, industrial and multimarket business group Peter Bauer said of the company’s position in the automotive market that Infi neon has in place the customer relationships to be the number one semiconductor supplier to the sector in both Europe and North America in 2010/2011. The company is also already the largest non-indigenous supplier in the Japanese market, he added. There is “no limit” to the potential penetration of electronics into the sector, he believes, anticipating a much wider market presence for hybrid cars. These will bring with them higher voltage and higher power electrical systems, which in turn will enable more systems to become completely electric, with the need for more control systems, sensors andinterconnects.

XC2300, Infi neon says, is the only microcontroller family that can achieve certifi cation to SIL (safety integrity level) 3 under the IEC 61508 standard. Although the latter is not primarily an automotiveindustry standard, Infi neon believes this capability will increase confi dence when designing the chip into missioncritical functions in vehicles. A dedicated peripheral-controller block carries out CRC (cyclic-redundancy check) on all peripherals, and a memoryprotection unit partitions software tasks into trusted and untrusted categories, providing both time-based and memory-space protection so that safety- and non-safetycritical tasks can be executed coherently: the unit controls “encapsulation” of the tasks and avoids cross-task interference. You can save software- development costs if you re-use or import software for less critical “untrusted” tasks and engineer only the safety-critical “trusted” tasksto a higher level.

You can confi gure the USIC (Universal Serial Interface Channel) of the XC2300 family as UART (Universal Asynchronous Receive Transmit), LIN (Local Inter-connect Network), buffered SPI (Serial Peripheral Interface), I2C (Inter-IC) bus, or IIS (Inter-IC-Sound) interfaces. In addition, the MultiCAN (CAN Rev. 2.0B active) provides gateway functions and up to 64 fl exibly assignable message objects on up to three CAN nodes. Two parallel A/D converters offer up to 24 channels, optional data pre-processing and a conversion time down to 1.2 µsec. The A/D converters have specifi c safety attributes, such as a discharge feature to detect broken connections, and the ability to synchronise the two A/D converters to redundantly sample incoming signals. The chips retain the 166’s abilities in terms of fast interrupt time and DSP-processing instructions. Infi neon will provide AUTOSAR drivers for all familymembers.

Infi neon plans a device family comprising up to 50 parts. The fi rst two are the XC2365 and XC2387 that, with memory, clock speed and other variations, introduce 16 products. Flash-memory size spans 384, 448 or 576 kbytes, ADC channels number 16 or 24, frequency is 66 or 80 MHz, temperature range can be industrial or extended (to +125°C), and there are also package options. Further versions with a fl ash-memory size up to 1.6 Mbyte and additional features such as FlexRay interfaces will appear in 2008. An XC2365 with 66-MHz frequency, 384 kbytes of fl ash memory and an automotive temperature range of -40°C to +125°C sells for€5.35 (20,000).

Infineon,www.infi neon.com.