New MCU Controls Multiple Automotive Functions
Summary
A new automotive microcontroller (MCU) is said to be the first of its kind to incorporate virtualization into the hardware, enabling engineers to control multiple vehicle applications with a single device. By doing so, it could enable developers to employ the same basic underlying software, such as the operating system and hardware drivers, to build the various automotive applications into one chip. The key to those capabilities is the so-called “virtualization.” In virtualization, a portion of the hardware is committed to each user, allowing multiple “virtual machines” to run concurrently without interference. Integrating multiple functions onto a single device represents a departure from the way automotive features have been developed, Renesas said. For more than a decade, manufacturers have been trying to find ways to reduce the number of ECUs, which has in some extreme cases climbed to more than 150 per vehicle.