With a collection of microcontrollers released today, STMicroelectronics is targeting automotive drive-train and domain-oriented systems. “The ‘Stellar P6‘ automotive microcontrollers connect motion-control and energy-management domains with actuation capabilities” for software-defined drive-traction designs, according to ST automotive vice president Luca Rodeschini. “As the automotive industry begins work on vehicle platforms for model-year 2024, ST is ready to help developers using microcontrollers.” P6 MCUs will include up to six Arm Cortex R52 processor cores, some of which will operate in lock-step and others in split-lock for fail-safe redundancy. Over-the-air updates are possible. Hardware virtualization is offered to segregate the various software programs intended to execute on the cores for safety and security. At the moment, two devices with six cores are suggested (samples are stated to be available): SR6P6C4 in a 17 x 17 x 0.8mm FPBGA 292 package and SR6P6C8 in a 25 x 25 x 0.8mm FPBGA 516 package. Along with this, two P7 processors have appeared in ST’s pipeline, each with six Cortex-R52+ cores, nearly four times the ram, and additional non-volatile memory.
ISO 26262 ASIL-D applications are targeted by on-chip safety safeguards. These include a hardware security module strengthened with cryptographic engines that function in tandem, which “enables enhanced Evita complete security capability” and “provides safe network authentication to protect manufacturer firmware as well as end-user data,” according to ST. Domain (or zone) architectures combine the functions of several electronic control units into a smaller number of control units. This may imply that software from many sources that was not designed to function alongside other applications must be consolidated onto a single processor.
