Houston — Texas Instruments has turned to the ARM Cortex R4 as the microcontroller core for its new TMS570 MCU for automotive safety applications.
The TMS570 MCU platform uses two identical Cortex R4 cores combined with an initial two Mbytes of on-chip flash memory. Targeted applications include chassis control, braking/electronic vehicle stability and steering with higher and lower memory and performance variations planned. The dual cores are tightly coupled by a patent pending architecture for maximum reliability, while memory is protected by Error-Correcting Code (ECC) bit checking.
The TMS570 MCU is said to be the first automotive processor solution to support a certification according to the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) 61508 SIL3 standard, the highest level of safety that is designated for automotive applications. Co-developed with Robert Bosch GmbH, the TMS570 MCU will be implemented in next generation braking, steering and chassis control applications. As vehicles become more complex and integrate more features, safety standardization is becoming increasingly important among automakers and OEMs. Software development for the dual-core TMS570 MCU becomes less complex by eliminating a dedicated checker MCU algorithm and communication overhead between the main controller and the checker MCU thus reducing development time and cost.
For more details of the MCU, see block diagram below.
The FlexRay networking protocol is also implemented directly on the TMS570 MCU further increasing integration. This deterministic communications standard offers fully deterministic and fault tolerant communications for advanced automotive systems.
Pricing and availability were not released for the TMS 570 platform. For more information on TI's automotive products, please see www.ti.com/automotive.
Texas Instruments (800) 477-8924
www.ti.com
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