Texas Instruments' TMS570F microcontroller is claimed to be the first in the industry to be based on ARM’s dual-core Cortex-R4F processor and targeting automotive safety applications.

The MCUs are said to reduce complexity and time-to-market for braking, steering, advanced driver assistance and chassis control. The microcontrollers were designed specifically for applications required to meet the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) 61508 SIL3 or ISO26262 ASIL D safety standards.

"According to Strategy Analytics, the number of microcontrollers per car is forecast to double by 2012," said Wayne Lyons, Director, Embedded Solutions, ARM. "Added to this growth, the sophistication of safety control functions is expected to increase substantially. TI's Cortex-R4F processor-based TMS570F MCUs offer designers a way to reduce that complexity while offering top-notch performance and the ability to differentiate their solutions."

The TMS570F floating-point MCU allows automotive system designers to implement both single and double precision floating point math depending on performance requirements. Accelerated multiply, divide and square root functions enable physical model-based control through development environments like The Mathworks Real Time Workshop and ETAS ASCET.

"Embedded control will continue to be a primary driver of high-end automotive microcontroller performance and functional development," said Mark Fitzgerald, senior analyst with Strategy Analytics. "However, going forward, multi-sensor advanced driver assistance system applications will increasingly emerge as high performance processor drivers."

Consequently, multi-core designs will increase for greater computational performance, added Fitzgerald.

Hardware built in self test (BIST) of both memory and CPU functions further increases integration, says TI, and lets designers detect latent defects without using complex safety software drivers that reduce performance and have significant code size overhead.

Hardware comparison of the CPU's outputs provides on line diagnostics with exceptional safety response time and no additional software overhead.

The Cortex-R4F processor-based MCU is designed to meet error-free automotive safety standards and provide system-wide protection through seamless support for error detection from the processor, through the interconnect and into the memories. The error correction code (ECC) logic is integrated into the Cortex-R4F CPU, which protects both the memories and busses.

Because ECC is evaluated within the CPU, the system takes advantage of the eight-stage pipeline to allow time for ECC evaluation with no performance impact. In the event of a memory error, the ECC logic will correct it, rather than just communicating the error and stopping the system.