Fault-robust microcontrollers allow automotive technology convergence: Part 1, the nature of faults
Life is hard for today's automotive electronics MCUs (Microcontroller Units). On one side, you could have 50 or more of them are involved in airbags, brakes, chassis control, engine control, and X-by-wire applications. Deeper (and often immature) silicon technologies are used to reduce costs. New functionalities are implemented in software, so the memory and performance requirements have increased. Standardization efforts and new software architectures such AUTOSAR are driving automotive electronics towards more and more powerful CPUs. Internal buses are crowded by demanding peripherals.
On the other side, as a consequence of such increased complexity, the population of faults is increasing as well. These include:
In particular, hardware faults (systematic or random) are worsened by: The increased soft-error failure rates (i.e. cosmic rays); coupling effects and disturbances are more and more important; and intrinsic uncertainty due to model inaccuracy is a problem of new technologies.
Moreover, system complexity and use of third-party IP increase the verification gaps and software faults. If we define "robustness" as the ability to continue mission reliably despite the existence of systematic, random or malicious faults, how do you design fault-robust MCUs ?
Related Semiconductor IP
- USB 4.0 V2 PHY - 4TX/2RX, TSMC N3P , North/South Poly Orientation
- FH-OFDM Modem
- NFC wireless interface supporting ISO14443 A and B with EEPROM on SMIC 180nm
- PQC CRYSTALS core for accelerating NIST FIPS 202 FIPS 203 and FIPS 204
- USB Full Speed Transceiver
Related White Papers
- Automotive System & Software Development Challenges - Part 1
- Dealing with automotive software complexity with virtual prototyping - Part 1: Virtual HIL development basics
- Paving the way for the next generation audio codec for the True Wireless Stereo (TWS) applications - PART 1 : TWS challenges explained
- Paving the way for the next generation of audio codec for True Wireless Stereo (TWS) applications - PART 5 : Cutting time to market in a safe and timely manner
Latest White Papers
- FastPath: A Hybrid Approach for Efficient Hardware Security Verification
- Automotive IP-Cores: Evolution and Future Perspectives
- TROJAN-GUARD: Hardware Trojans Detection Using GNN in RTL Designs
- How a Standardized Approach Can Accelerate Development of Safety and Security in Automotive Imaging Systems
- SV-LLM: An Agentic Approach for SoC Security Verification using Large Language Models