Spansion launches automotive microcontrollers
May 19, 2014. Spansion Inc. today announced a new family of microcontrollers targeted at automotive applications. The Spansion Traveo microcontrollers are based on the ARM Cortex-R5 core and will deliver high performance, enhanced human-machine interfaces, high-security, and advanced networking protocols tailored for a broad range of automotive applications such as electrification, body electronics, battery management, automotive cluster displays, HVAC, and ADAS.
Combined with Spansion’s expertise in building automotive systems, this new family will enable scalable and efficient designs of high performing and secure automotive applications that will improve drivers’ safety and user experience with the latest technology advancements in cars.
“The Spansion Traveo family strengthens our position as a leading provider of MCU products for automotive and industrial applications,” said Takeshi Fuse, senior vice president and general manager of Spansion’s Automotive MCU Business Unit. “The family of MCUs will offer application-tailored system solutions to ease both hardware and software design and integration, delivering advanced security and performance.”
The first product of the Spansion Traveo family, the MB9D560, features dual ARM Cortex-R5 cores with 2MB of embedded Flash and operates at 200 MHz.
The Spansion Traveo microcontrollers expand Spansion’s portfolio for vehicle electrification utilized in hybrid-electric vehicles (HEV) and electric vehicles (EV). The dual-core structure on a single chip has two interface circuits for resolver sensors for motor control, and two unique hardware IP blocks for motor-control operations. Each core has a built-in floating-point unit (FPU) and operates at 1.66 DMIPS/MHz, with each motor running independently but monitoring the operation of each other. The system’s reliability is achieved with a memory-protection unit, error correction code (ECC), parity error detection, and correction functions.
Industry support
“The ARM architecture addresses the automotive market’s specific low power and performance needs,” said Richard York, vice president of product marketing, CPU group, ARM. “Spansion's new portfolio of Traveo microcontrollers is a great example of fast, real-time and deterministic microcontrollers that will broaden the adoption of our architecture into new applications inside the vehicle, and transform the motoring experience.”
“At a time when system designers are demanding ever higher levels of MCU performance and power efficiency, this new MCU family based on ARM Cortex-R5 based is an important addition to Spansion’s automotive capabilities while also delivering a cost benefit through the integration of multiple functions onto a single chip,” said Chris Webber, vice president for the Global Automotive Practice, Strategy Analytics.
www.spansion.com/Products/microcontrollers/32-bit-ARM-Core/Traveo/Pages/default.aspx