Infineon Develops New Microcontroller for Automotive Applications

Infineon Technologies has announced that it has developed a new microcontroller for automotive applications that will join its portfolio of automotive microcontrollers called the Aurix range. The new microcontroller called TC3A will be used for automotive 77 GHz radar applications like high-end corner radar systems that will be used for advanced driver assistance systems and automated driving. Some of the features of the new product include a new signal-processing unit, a large SRAM memory that is dedicated to radar and four TriCore processors which run at 300 MHz with two additional lockstep cores.

The SPU 2.0 signal processing unit is a more advanced version of Infineon’s accelerator for radar processing. It offers the benefits of lower latencies for Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) processing, higher capability for interference mitigation and different modulation schemes which make it possible for customers to enhance radar resolution at lower cost.

The current portfolio of microcontrollers includes Infineon AURIX™ TC39, TC35 and TC33 devices which offer long-range, mid-range and short-range radar applications. Each device has been designed with specific features which allow customers to address different needs with performance and cost-optimized microcontrollers. The new TC3A further enhances this portfolio at the upper performance end.

Key features of the TC3A:
• Four cores with TriCore architecture with two lockstep cores which run at 300 MHz thus providing safe processing capability
• SPU 2.0 with extended features for realtime interference mitigation and lower resources consumption
• 6 MB of embedded SRAM for storage of data during processing
• High-speed radar MMIC (Monolithic Microwave Integrated Circuit) interface with up to 600 Mbps
• Hardware Security Module (HSM) which is compliant with EVITA full specification
Samples of the new TC3A will be made available to selected customers from 2022.