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This paper will outline the results of a study performed to analyze the market introduction of x-by-wire applications in the context of weak global industry environment, technological and legislative challenges, standardization issues and end customer benefits. This paper attempts to provide a bird-view on influence factors and impacts for the x-by-wire market, including e.g. the end customer's acceptance and legal environment driving further development in specific areas. Further, major driving forces on semiconductor/component level will be outlined regarding e.g. pin-count, computation performance and heat dissipation, but also possible scenarios and solutions towards safe and efficient system design and partitioning.

Automotive powertrain and safety systems under design today are highly complex, incorporating more than one CPU core, running with more than 100 MHz and consisting of several 10 million transistors. Software complexity increases similarly making new methodologies and tools mandatory to manage the overall system. The use of accurate virtual prototypes improves the quality of systems with respect to system architecture design and software development. This approach is demonstrated with the example of the PCP/GPTA subsystem for Infineon's AUDO-NG powertrain controllers.

More than ever, microcontroller performance in cars has a direct impact on the driving experience, on compliance with improved safety, ever-stricter emissions regulations, and on fuel economy. The simple microcontrollers formerly used in automobiles are now being replaced by powerful number-crunchers whose performance can no longer be measured in MIPS. Instead, their effectiveness is based on a coherent partitioning between analog and digital, hardware and software, tools and methodology. To make an informed choice among the available devices, what the designer needs are benchmarks that are specific to automotive applications, and which provide a realistic representation of how the device will perform in the automotive environment. This presentation will explore the role of new benchmarks in the development of complex automotive applications.

More than ever, microcontroller performance in cars has a direct impact on the driving experience, on compliance with improved safety, ever-stricter emissions regulations, and on fuel economy. The simple microcontrollers formerly used in automobiles are now being replaced by powerful number-crunchers with incredible levels of peripheral integration. As a result, performance can no longer be measured in MIPS (Millions of Instructions Per Second). A microcontroller's effectiveness is based on coherent partitioning between analog and digital, hardware and software, tools and methodology. To make an informed choice among the available devices, the designer needs benchmarks that are specific to automotive applications, and which provide a realistic representation of how the device will perform in the automotive environment.

Trans Tech recently debuted the all-electric eTrans school bus providing a total zero emission school bus. The presentation will demonstrate Smith Electric Vehicles and their history with electric vehicles. The presentation will help ensure that everybody has an idea of what the electric school bus will do and to dispel any rumors about the vehicle. Presenter Brian S. Barrington, Trans Tech. Bus

The amount of electronics in vehicles is increasing, so is the amount of power electronics circuits, like inverters for electric motor drives or dc/dc converters. The muscles of these circuits are power transistors like MOSFETs and IGBTs - in each circuit are several of them. While MOSFETs and IGBTs have advanced over the years in terms of their performance, their wide product spectrum and feature spectrum as well as cost, they are still not unbreakable, but semiconductors which are more sensitive to electrical or thermal overstress than, a relay for instance. Especially electrical overstress, like overvoltage or over current, may damage a power transistor within a short time frame. Hence, electrical overstress must be avoided when designing the power electronics circuit. However, even a power transistor in a carefully designed power electronics circuit, may still be exposed to over current, short circuit, over voltage, over temperature and so forth.

For highly automated driving, commercial vehicles require an Electric/Electronic (E/E) architecture, which - in addition to sensor fusion - ensures safety-critical processes such as steering and braking at all times. Among other things, a redundant 24 V supply with corresponding disconnection is required. The battery switch is a key component. Commercial, construction, and agricultural vehicles (CAV) need to operate at the highest possible availability and the lowest possible cost of ownership. This is why automated and autonomous driving has the potential to revolutionize the CAV sector. Driverless machines can be operated around the clock and almost non-stop. Platooning allows automated, interconnected trucks to drive in a convoy and very close to each other. Platooning saves fuel.

Functional safe systems fulfilling the ISO 26262 standard are getting more important for automotive applications where additional redundant and diverse functionality is needed for higher rated ASIL levels. This can result in a very complex and expensive system setup. Here we present a sensor product developed according ISO 26262. This sensor product comprises a two channel redundant and also diverse implemented magnetic field sensor concept with linear digital outputs on one monolithically integrated silicon substrate. This sensor is used for ASIL D applications like power-steering torque measurement, where the torque is transferred into a magnetic field signal in a certain magnetic setup, but can also be used in other demanding sensor applications concerning safety. This proposed and also implemented solution is beneficial because of implementation on a single chip in one single chip-package but anyway fulfilling ASIL D requirements on system level.

This paper will give an overview of multicore in automotive applications, covering the trends, benefits, challenges, and implementation scenarios. The automotive silicon industry has been building multicore and multiprocessor systems for a long time. The reasons for this choice have been: increased performance, safety redundancy, increased I/O & peripheral, access to multiple architectures (performance type e.g. DSP) and technologies. In the past, multiprocessors have been mainly considered as multi-die, multi-package with simple interconnection such as serial or parallel busses with possible shared memories. The new challenge is to implement a multicore, micro-processor that combines two or more independent processors into a single package, often a single integrated circuit (IC). The multicores allow a computing device to exhibit some form of thread-level parallelism (TLP).

Advanced safety features and new services in connected cars depend on the security of the underlying vehicle functions. Due to the interconnection with the outside world and as a result of being an embedded system a modern vehicle is exposed to both, malicious activities as faced by traditional IT world systems as well as physical attacks. This introduces the need for utilizing hardware-assisted security measures to prevent both kinds of attacks. In this paper we present a survey of the different classes of hardware security devices and depict their different functional range and application. We demonstrate the feasibility of our approach by conducting a case study on an exemplary implementation of a function-on-demand use case. In particular, our example outlines how to apply the different hardware security approaches in practice to address real-world security topics. We conclude with an assessment of today’s hardware security devices.

Based on the example of a door soft close automatic the potential of integrated system simulation in the automotive systems development is demonstrated. The modeling approach is covering several physical domains like mechanics, electromagnetics and semiconductor physics. With adequate simplifying methods a time efficient model is generated, which allows system optimization in the concept phase. Time consuming redesigns can thus be minimized.

The electrification of the powertrain is still one of the main challenges and innovation drivers for modern cars. With the introduction of the Toyota Prius, launched in Japan in 1997 the first commercially available hybrid car in mass production, the development continued towards the BMW i3 launched in July 2013. One main component for all kind of hybrid cars is still the power semiconductor, which is used for DC/DC converters and for the inverter to drive the electric motor for the traction control. What makes the selection of the right power semiconductor complex, is the variety of different voltage levels within the car (from standard 12V board net, the new 48V board net all the way up to 400V and above) plus different requirements in terms of switching and conduction performance, or accordingly power losses. The selection of device by application and voltage will be discussed in this paper.

Autonomous driving systems and connected mobility are the next big developments for the car manufacturers and their suppliers during the next decade. To achieve the high computing power needs and fulfill new upcoming requirements due to functional safety and security, heterogeneous processor architectures with a mixture of different core architectures and hardware accelerators are necessary. To tackle this new type of hardware complexity and nevertheless stay within monetary constraints, high performance computers, inspired by state of the art data center hardware, could be adapted in order to fulfill automotive quality requirements. The European Processor Initiative (EPI) research project tries to come along with that challenge for next generation semiconductors. To be as close as possible to series development needs for the next upcoming car generations, we present a hybrid semiconductor system-on-chip architecture for automotive.

Introduction The introduction of Ethernet and Gigabit Ethernet [2] as the main invehicle network infrastructure is the technical foundation for different new functionalities such as piloted driving, minimizing the CO2- footprint and others. The high data rate of such systems influences also the used microcontrollers due the fact that a big amount of data has to be transferred, encrypted, etc. Figure 1 Motivation - Vehicles will become connected to uncontrolled networks The usage of Ethernet as the in-vehicle-network enables the possibility that future road vehicles are going to be connected with other vehicles and information systems to improve system functionality. These previously closed automotive systems will be opened up for external access (see Figure 1). This can be Car2X connectivity or connection to personal devices. Allowing vehicle systems to communicate with other systems that are not within their physical boundaries impose a previously non-existing security problem.

The paper will give an introduction to the principle of the giant magneto resistive - GMR - effect and the silicon system integration of GMR sensors. The two main applications of a GMR as a magnetic field strength sensor and as an angular field direction sensor will be discussed under consideration of automotive requirements. The typical applications of a magnetic field strength GMR sensor in incremental position and speed sensing and those of GMR angular field sensors in position sensing will be summarized. Finally advantages of GMR in those applications will be discussed and conclusions on the use of GMR in automotive sensing will be drawn.

The current automotive electronic and electrical (EE) architecture has reached a scalability limit and in order to adapt to the new and upcoming requirements, novel automotive EE architectures are currently being investigated to support: a) an Ethernet backbone, b) consolidation of hardware capabilities leading to a centralized architecture from an existing distributed architecture, c) optimization of wiring to reduce cost, and d) adaptation of service-oriented software architectures. These requirements lead to the development of Zonal EE architectures as a possible solution that require appropriate adaptation of used security mechanisms and the corresponding utilized hardware trust anchors. 1 The current architecture approaches (ECU internal and in-vehicle networking) are being pushed to their limits, simultaneously, the current embedded security solutions also seem to reveal their limitations due to an increase in connectivity.

The standard ISO 26262 stipulates a “top-down” approach based on the process “V” model, by conducting a hazard analysis and risk assessment to determine the safety goals, and subsequently derives the safety requirements down to the appropriate element level. The specification of safety goals is targeted towards identified hazardous events, whereas the classification of safety requirements does not always turn out non-ambiguous. While requirement formalization turns out to be advantageous, the translation from natural language to semi-formal requirements, especially in context of ISO 26262, poses a problem. In this publication, a new approach for the formalization of safety requirements is introduced, targeting the demands of safety standard ISO 26262. Its part 8, clause 6 (“Specification and management of safety requirements”) has no dedicated work product to accomplish this challenging task.

Infineon's latest high-end automotive microcontrollers like TC1796 are complex Systems On Chip (SoC) with two processor cores and up to two internal multi-master buses. The complex interaction between cores, peripherals and environment provides a big challenge for debugging. For mission critical control like engine management the debugging approach must not be intrusive. The provided solution are dedicated Emulation Devices which are able to deal with several 10 Gbit/s of raw internal trace data with nearly no cost adder for mass production and system design. Calibration, which is used later in the development cycle, has different requirements, but is covered by the Emulation Devices as well. The architecture of TC1796ED comprises the unchanged TC1796 silicon layout, extended by a full In-Circuit Emulator (ICE) and calibration overlay memory on the same die. In most cases, the only debug/calibration tool hardware needed is a USB cable.

In terms of modern technical systems, the automotive sector is characterized by escalating complexity and functionality requirements. The development of embedded control systems has to meet highest demands regarding process-, time- and cost-optimization. Hence, the efficiency of software development becomes a crucial competitive advantage. Systems design engineers need effective tools and methods to achieve exemplary speed and productivity within the development phase. To obtain such tools and methods, semiconductor manufacturers and tool manufacturers must work closely together. Within the joint efforts of ETAS and Infineon, the software tool suite ASCET-SD was enhanced to generate efficient C code for Infineon's TriCore architecture mapped on ETAS's real-time operating system ERCOSEK. The processor interface to application & calibration tools was realized using the ETK probe based on a JTAG/Nexus link at very high bandwidth.

Today the majority of power electronics is developed based on the requirements set by the main fields of application e.g. power generation, power supply, industrial drive and traction. With introduction to automotive applications new requirements have to be taken into account. This paper discusses how interconnection technologies for power semiconductors can be improved to meet the demand for higher temperature capability in HEV applications.