For automotive design, faster is better

By _EDN Blogs

September 29, 2014

Current trends in automotive design include a rapid migration to connected and autonomous vehicles, a significant per-vehicle increase in electronic content and, of course, the evergreen demands of greater efficiency, safety and security. While developers have a lot more on their plate, they are expected to bring these solutions to market quickly. Extending the footprint of ARM-based MCUs throughout the entire vehicle enables easier development through synergy. That is, after all, one of the major benefits of using ARM – the ability to develop in an ecosystem that offers commonality in architecture and tools. The majority of auto-interior features wouldn’t necessitate ARM’s Cortex-A or Real-Time architectures. For automotive applications, the ARM solution in terms of price, feature set and performance is the Cortex-M0+, an architecture powerful enough to accommodate advanced functions such as sensorless BLDC motor control, yet simple enough to replace 8- or 16-bit devices in less processor-intensive applications such as lighting control.

Time-to-market challenges don’t end with an MCU architecture, however. In order to truly acquire a competitive edge in the automotive and industrial sectors, designers must have access to intuitive development tools, application-specific software, reference designs and source code, if not production-ready turn-key solutions.

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