By ATN Editorial Team
Summary: NXP Semiconductors and Rimac Technology have partnered to develop centralised automotive architectures using NXP’s S32E2 processors for the SDV (software-defined-vehicle). This platform consolidates over 20 ECUs into just three domain controllers, enabling safer, high-performance real-time control. The technology targets applications like vehicle dynamics, energy management, and body electronics with full ISO 26262 ASIL D compliance.
Auto Tech View:
- High-performance multi-core processing with real-time deterministic control enabling multi-application domain consolidation in SDVs.
- Reduces complexity, weight, and cost for OEMs by simplifying ECU architecture and accelerating SDV software integration.
- Relevant to engineers facing system integration challenges and safety-critical software development in evolving centralised vehicle architectures.
NXP Semiconductors N.V. (NASDAQ: NXPI), the worldwide leader in automotive processing, today announced its collaboration with Rimac Technology, a leading automotive industry supplier specialized in high-performance control systems, to advance centralized architectures for SDVs. The jointly developed solution features NXP’s S32E2 processors, which are part of NXP’s comprehensive S32 Automotive Processing Platform, designed for current and future connectivity, security and safety challenges in automotive. The S32E addresses the vehicle’s need for high-performance deterministic real-time domain and zonal control in a multi-applications environment.
The rapid evolution of new centralized vehicle architectures and the consolidation of electronic control units (ECUs) demand a high level of safe application integration. NXP and Rimac Technology’s jointly developed architecture provides an easy-to-use platform that allows the development and efficient integration of many different vehicle applications such as vehicle dynamics and charging control, energy and thermal management, and body electronics.
The S32E2, at the heart of it, allows the consolidation of over 20 ECUs into just three centralized units. The S32E is part of NXP’s high performance multi-application processor range and integrates 8 Arm® Cortex®-R52 processor cores running at up to 1 GHz, high-resolution analog-to-digital converters and the capability to support large amounts of non-volatile memory, up to 64MB.
“OEMs and tier 1s have faced the challenge of either consolidating multiple applications within legacy microcontrollers or deploying excessive redundant computing power to achieve application independence. The NXP platform allows developers to quickly implement SDV features for advanced real-time applications. The S32E2 enables the efficient integration of numerous applications within an easy-to-debug environment, where task isolation and determinism are inherent to the design.”
Ray Cornyn, SVP and General Manager, Automotive Processors, NXP Semiconductors
“The growing complexity of vehicle systems with numerous ECUs requires a solution that decreases weight, manages power consumption and simplifies software integration. With NXP’s S32E2 real-time processors, we found the ideal high-performance and automotive-grade solution that allows us to integrate several units into a single domain controller, reducing complexity and material costs for automotive OEMs while significantly increasing computational power.”
Ana Martinčić Špoljarić, Business Unit Director for Powertrain and Electronics at Rimac Technology
The ISO 26262 ASIL D compliant S32E2 series serves the diverse automotive OEM needs by providing safe and secure high-performance processing that is essential for SDVs. Its comprehensive safety offering with core to pin isolation mechanism ensures freedom of interference and task level fault recovery throughout the device. The integrated, powerful Hardware Security Engine provides secure boot, key management and security services.
Rimac Technology will primarily leverage the new ECU platform in a hyper car program, with plans to scale up in different vehicle segments and alternative mobility sectors. Find out more about the collaboration with Rimac Technology.
System Solutions
The S32E2 extends NXP’s comprehensive S32 automotive processing platform and fits between the recently introduced S32K5 microcontroller family and the 5 nm S32N real-time super integration processors.
Combined with NXP’s networking and system power management solutions and the middleware, OSes and other software from the world’s leading automotive software providers under the NXP CoreRide platform, these system solutions help automakers overcome software and hardware integration barriers, while scaling development efforts for new architectures in SDVs.
S32E2 System Support
NXP offers system support for S32E2 processors to accelerate customer designs including the FS86 ASIL D safety system basis chip (SBC) and PF5030 power management IC (PMIC) with enhanced safety features and in-vehicle networking support with Ethernet switches and PHYs and CAN transceivers, along with other analog companion chips such as the GD3160 IGBT/SiC high-voltage inverter gate driver and MC3377x battery cell controllers.
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