Seamlessly integrate high-performance ARM core TI MCU solutions to empower automotive electrification

TI can provide customers with more choices. On December 9, 2022, at the 2022 Third Hybrid Technology Development Forum hosted by Gasgoo, Lu Jing, MCU product technical manager of Texas Instruments China, introduced that in order to deal with high-voltage, integrated, high-security and other electronic control fields In response to industry needs, TI launched the third-generation C2000™ DSP and AM263X real-time MCU products based on the ARM core, which provide a variety of pin counts, memory and packaging options to meet various functional requirements such as integrated communications, functional safety and information security. Aimed at achieving higher performance and more economical and practical real-time control effects.

Lu Jing | MCU Product Technical Manager, Texas Instruments China

The following is the summary of the speech:   

Texas Instruments is a semiconductor chip company. Our business covers all aspects of chip research and development, manufacturing, testing, and sales. TI has more than 8,000 analog and digital products and nearly 100,000 customers around the world in the industrial automotive, consumer electronics, enterprise market and communications markets. Today we will focus on introducing TI’s MCU products in the field of automotive electrification.

TI has entered China in 1986. Over the past 36 years, we have continuously increased our local service system in China. Currently, TI has an integrated manufacturing base in Chengdu and R&D teams in Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen. We also have product distribution centers in Shanghai and Shenzhen, and nearly 20 sales and technical support branches to provide comprehensive support to Chinese customers.

Texas Instruments Automotive Electrification MCU Solutions

In recent years, the development trends of the automotive industry such as electrification, intelligence and connectivity have also brought many technical challenges. In the field of electrification, market trends require that electric vehicle speeds become faster and faster, pure electric cruising range becomes longer and longer, charging time also needs to become faster, power conversion efficiency needs to become higher, and support for SiC, etc. The switching speed of power devices and PWM frequency control will also become faster, while ensuring the functional safety of the power system.

The field of intelligence puts forward requirements for chips with stronger computing power and support for multi-sensor fusion. Connectivity requires cars to be interconnected while ensuring data security and network security. Based on these technology trends, MCU products will have several common features:

The first is high performance, and secondly, information security and functional safety are becoming more and more important, which requires MCU products not only to consider the main frequency, but also to consider the functional safety issues of the entire system.

Many guests today mentioned that the automotive industry is very complicated. Another manifestation of the complexity is that the entire product development cycle is getting shorter and shorter. As a semiconductor supplier, we need to provide a better software development environment and knowledge base to allow customers to quickly develop products and better achieve product reuse.

Image source: TI

First, let’s take a look at the MCU layout of the entire car body. We have selected a few MCU applications that may be of interest to you. For autonomous driving radar processing, TI has launched the AM27 series of products, including a pair of R5 lock-step cores and a C6000 DSP core. TI's DSP has a history of 20 to 30 years, so our performance in the digital signal calculation process is very superior and can process radar signals very well. At the same time, TI AM27 is also very suitable for voice signal processing and can support the development of personalized products.

In addition, cars are developing towards domain controllers. In the future, the data transmission traffic between each module of the car body will be higher and higher, and the current LIN and CAN will be unable to meet the demand. In the long run, automotive Ethernet may be about to be implemented, so TI has launched the AM24 series of products, which can be used for body gateways or domain controllers.

Today’s protagonists are C2000™ and AM26, which will be more used in electrification fields such as electronic control and electric drive. All TI products are based on a unified architecture, and the entire development process based on a unified architecture will be faster.

We divide the electrification process into two parts. The first part is electric drive, including hybrid system, electric drive part, body air conditioning, etc.

The other is the electronic control part, such as plug-in hybrid charging OBC, DC/DC converter for high and low voltage conversion in the car body, etc. The common feature of such applications is real-time control, that is, the ability to quickly collect signals on the board and quickly achieve real-time control through a series of operations.

Image source: TI

For such real-time applications, TI has launched two series of products. The first is the C2000™ series on the left, which has been widely used by many manufacturers on the market; the AM26x series of products we launched last year on the right is The product will be mass-produced this month.

The common feature of both products is that they both have TI's high-performance real-time control units, including high-throughput ADC modules, high-precision PWM modules and high-speed comparator modules.

In response to the trend of functional safety and AUTOSAR, the HSM hardware encryption module has been integrated into AM26x products, supporting up to ASIL-D level certification.

Let’s take another look at the trends in the electronic control field. Cars need longer range and therefore need to support higher power. According to market information and forecast data, the market share of 11kW or 22kW OBC modules will be increasingly high in 2030. To realize this type of product, we need a faster switching frequency, so we will use new power devices such as SiC, and the control frequency will increase from the current one or two hundred K to several hundred K, or even mega-level control. At this time, the CPU requires higher computing power, and the performance of peripherals must be further improved.

TI's products have significant advantages. From ADC sampling to electronic control algorithms to PWM output, the entire loop can be controlled within a microsecond, which is a very excellent performance in the industry. For the complex topology of electronic control products, we also provide up to 64 channels of high-precision PWM to help customers achieve very flexible designs.

Coupled with the support of AUTOSAR and ASIL-D, customers can easily use TI's chip designs.

Image source: TI

Specifically, we can further refine the architecture of OBC and DC/DC on the PCB board. On the left is a charging device. The front end of OBC is usually an AC/DC power factor correction circuit, which can make the product higher and better utilize the power grid efficiency. , and later the voltage will be increased to a high voltage of 400V or even 800V through DC/DC to charge the power battery, and the power battery will drive the motor during further operation.

Since the car body contains many speakers, seats, lights and other equipment, there is a 12V or 48V circuit. At this time, a conversion process from high voltage to low voltage is required, and this process needs to be realized while the car is driving. Functional safety is therefore a top priority.

Image source: TI

Various manufacturers on the market implement functions in a variety of ways. We have summarized these into four application scenarios. One is currently more common on the market, that is, using a single chip to do PFC, which is a non-isolated circuit, and then using a second chip to do OBC DC/DC, because this module needs to be connected to other components in the car. Components communicate, so a third MCU is usually needed to run AUTOSAR, information security or functional safety.

In the second method, we will choose a stronger MCU, which can combine the DC/DC part of the OBC and the main control MCU part to form a dual-chip solution.

In the third method, some customers will put OBC PFC and DC/DC on one chip and use a main control MCU.

The fourth method is large integration, in which all four functions can be placed on one chip.

TI provides all design flexibility, including high-performance products, such as the quad-core 400M product AM2634 and the dual-core product AM2632. C2000™ also has both quad-core and single-core products. For TI, we provide more options, and customers can choose solutions according to their own circumstances.

For DC/DC conversion from high voltage to low voltage, we also have dual-chip solutions and single-chip solutions. Integration is also a current trend, and we are very much looking forward to seeing the emergence of more innovative architectures.

Introduction to TI C2000™& AM263x chip features

TI's C2000™ has a history of more than 20 years and has been used in the field of real-time control. In the automotive field, the proportion of C2000™ in both electric drive and electronic control is quite high. To evaluate a chip, we can start from four aspects. First, whether it has sufficient ability and good performance to sample signals, including the number of channels, throughput rate, accuracy and other aspects of performance.

The second part is the processing part, that is, computing power.

The third part is control, including whether the control ability of the devices on the board is flexible, the length of the control delay, etc.

The fourth part is the interface. Whether the number, type, and throughput rate of the interface are rich enough to meet the needs of the majority of customers. From the above four aspects, we can basically evaluate whether an MCU can meet the basic requirements.