STMicroelectronics' new Automotive microcontroller enhances the safety of smart cars

     STMicroelectronics launches the first products of the SPC57 series of microcontrollers that are groundbreaking in the automotive market. The new product combines the industry's best safety assurance and price-performance ratio, and is based on the successful 32-bit architecture of the SPC5 microcontroller platform aimed at safety-critical and cost-sensitive automotive systems. Automotive systems must meet the most stringent safety requirements, including the ISO26262 ASIL-D Automotive Safety Integrity level.

     The new microcontroller is an automotive application system-on-chip (SoC) specifically designed to address the challenges of entry-level automotive safety-critical applications, including airbags, automotive and motorcycle anti-lock braking systems (ABS), Anti-lock Braking Systems), power steering systems and hybrid/electric vehicle DC/DC converters/inverters.

     As more and more people begin to embrace smart cars, car manufacturers are addressing the challenge of ensuring that all important functions have random fail-safe mechanisms, such as cosmic rays that cause changes in the bit state of the storage unit. St's SPC57 products are specifically designed to address these challenges, providing developers of automotive steering, braking and other functions with a highly competitive system solution, while providing the highest standards of safety performance and low-cost development methods.

     Luca Rodeschini, Director of Strategic Business Development and Microcontrollers at ST Automotive and Discrete Devices, said: "Safety is an important driving force for the automotive industry. Semiconductor technology makes cars safer and more energy efficient, so safety is also the driving force for automotive semiconductor technology. SPC57 is a scalable, future-proof solution with the highest price/performance ratio, fully compliant with the world's most stringent automotive safety assurance standards, providing customers with a long product life cycle and a fully functional low-cost development ecosystem. "

     The SPC57 series features the world's most advanced 55nm automotive technology with clock speeds up to 80MHz. Equally important, the new family comes with full-featured, low-cost development tools that are compatible with the existing development infrastructure of current Power Architecture microcontrollers, allowing developers to quickly develop new, cost-effective, safety-critical automotive systems.