NEC Electronics America Expands Automotive Offering With 32-Bit FlexRay-Based Microcontroller
NEC Electronics America, Inc. released its 32-bit all flash V850E/PHO3™ MCU – optimized for chassis and inverter control applications that require control of up to two 3-phase brushless dc motors simultaneously, such as electronic power steering, electronic braking, damping and other vehicle-stability control applications. Featuring an embedded FlexRay™ controller, the V850E/PHO3 MCU is well suited for advanced network architectures and future x-by-wire applications. The new device is the first NEC Electronics MCU to include an embedded FlexRay communications controller based on E-Ray intellectual property (IP) licensed from Robert Bosch GmbH.
"FlexRay technology is poised to replace the CAN protocol and become the network standard of choice in the chassis and powertrain areas," said Jim Trent, Associate VP and GM, Automotive Strategic Business Unit, NEC Electronics America, Inc. "Product development and support is critical to ensuring mainstream adoption of standards such as FlexRay, and NEC Electronics America is pleased to provide automotive engineers with a FlexRay-enabled solution designed specifically for chassis applications."
The V850E/PHO3 MCU was the first MCU to successfully pass the FlexRay Conformance Test administered by TUV Nord Group’s Institute for Vehicle Technology and Mobility, the FlexRay Consortium’s official partner for data link layer conformance testing. Required for all MCUs implemented in a FlexRay cluster of volume production cars, the certification is based on 275 tests that verify the functional behavior of an embedded FlexRay communications controller to ensure conformance with the FlexRay v2.1 specification.
The V850E/PHO3 MCU actively supports the design of Safety Integrity Level 3 (SIL3)- conformant (IEC61508) engine control units that have highly efficient, on-chip safety diagnostics – including error-correcting code in flash memory and RAM, hardware-based cyclical redundancy checks, redundant peripherals, core self-test software and a floating-point unit capable of diverse processing.
The V850E/PHO3 MCU is based on NEC Electronics’ V850E™ CPU core that operates at clock speeds up to 128MHz. Its peripheral set is backward-compatible with earlier versions of the V850/PHO lineup, including the V850E/PHO2™, and provides a scalable solution with a smooth migration path. Large memory capacities, including 1MB of embedded flash memory, 32KB of flash memory for data and 60KB of RAM, make the device suitable for complex application software. Two analog-to-digital (A/D) converters, 14 independent multi-channel pulse-width modulator (PWM) timers and two real-time pulse units allow control of up to two 3-phase brushless dc motors simultaneously. A highly efficient direct memory access (DMA) controller reduces CPU load to a minimum.
In addition to the FlexRay communications controller, the V850E/PHO3 MCU is equipped with two Controller Area Network (CAN) interfaces, three Local Interconnect Network (LIN)-UART interfaces, four clocked serial interfaces (CSIs) and a 32-bit non-multiplexing bus interface for use in advanced network architectures. The device has a small footprint and is available in a 35-pin ball grid array (BGA) package. NEC Electronics also provides a complete, ready-to-use AUTOSAR-compliant Microcontroller Abstraction Layer (MCAL) software stack that enables fast design of standardized and reusable application software.
Samples of the V850E/PHO3 MCU are available now, with volume production scheduled for Q1 2008.
