Infineon Technologies and Green Hills Launch Integrated Platform for Software-Defined Cars

Infineon Technologies and embedded supplier Green Hills have launched an integrated microcontroller-based processing platform for safety-critical real-time automotive systems. The platform combines Green Hills' safety-certified real-time operating system (RTOS) µ-velOSity with Infineon's new generation of safety controllers AURIX TC4x. This provides OEMs and Tier 1 suppliers with a reliable and secure processing platform for domain controllers, regional controllers, and powertrains developed for their next-generation software-defined vehicle (SDV) architectures.

“Green Hills’ tool product concept and matching software environment are an excellent match for our requirements for reliable products and solutions,” said Thomas Schneid, Senior Director of Software, Partnerships and Ecosystem Management at Infineon Technologies. “Combined with advanced microcontroller products such as the AURIX TC4x family, our customers gain a significant advantage in meeting their critical requirements.”

“We are excited to expand our long-standing collaboration with Infineon Technologies,” said Dan Mender, Vice President of Business Development at Green Hills Software. “The combination of Infineon’s new scalable microcontroller family, AURIX TC4x, and Green Hills’ µ-velOSity RTOS will enable our mutual customers to develop safe and secure systems for next-generation SDV E/E architectures.”

Facilitating the development of advanced ECUs

New automotive electronic control units (ECUs) are critical to the adaptive vehicle E/E architecture of SDVs. To develop these ECUs, new microcontrollers are needed that meet the requirements of safety-critical systems such as zone control, chassis, radar, electric drive and affordable artificial intelligence systems by providing higher performance and advanced features. Infineon meets this need with its new AURIX TC4x device family, which complements its TriCore multicore architecture with a safety accelerator kit. In addition, to meet stringent safety requirements, Green Hills has ported its safety-certified µ-velOSity RTOS to the AURIX TC4x family. The processor family is also supported by the advanced MULTI integrated development environment, enabling developers to increase developer productivity while generating the fastest and smallest code for AURIX TC4x, thereby reducing development time.

Infineon's AURIX TC4x series provides an upward migration path from the previous ASIL-compliant AURIX TC3x series of automotive MCUs. AURIX TC4x uses TriCore 1.8 and a scalable accelerator suite, including a new parallel processing unit (PPU) and multiple smart accelerators covering areas such as data routing, digital signal processing, radar processing, and cryptographic computing. The AURIX TC4x series supports high-speed interfaces including Gigabit Ethernet, PCIe, CAN-XL, or 10BASE T1S Ethernet, providing sufficient communication bandwidth for next-generation automotive systems.

Green Hills µ-velOSity RTOS targets the highest functional safety level (ISO 26262 ASIL D). It is based on an efficient and reliable kernel, a minimal footprint, and a simple API, and also provides features such as fast startup and simplified execution. In addition, µ-velOSity is tightly integrated with MULTI safety certification tools and compilers.