Flexible Microcontroller Solutions for Automotive Applications
Next-generation automotive electronic systems need highly specialized, cost-optimized devices to meet market requirements. Considering the dramatic increase in development costs for state-of-the-art process technologies, specialization of traditional microcontrollers no longer makes business sense. Neither do feature-rich devices targeted at broad-base markets, as they are often too expensive.
Alternatively, Altera's flexible microcontroller solution offers a process to develop the exact microcontroller for a specific application by implementing it into an FPGA with a Nios® II 32-bit RISC embedded soft core processor (recently named the #1 widely used soft processor by Gartner).
FPGAs offer a powerful, viable alternative to microcontrollers because they significantly reduce engineering development time and the cost of multiple silicon iterations. Verification, software development, and field testing can be done immediately after design or even in parallel. For example, the development of a flexible graphics system for car radios and navigation devices has been accelerated by six months or more using an FPGA approach.
Unlike microcontrollers that do not possess the required features, FPGAs can be programmed and reprogrammed as needed during the design process, enabling rapid prototyping and faster time-to-market. The devices can also be upgraded in the field if requirements change—even after the vehicle has been deployed to the market. Furthermore, a Nios II-based controller can be easily ported to another or a next-generation Altera® FPGA, making obsolescence issues a thing of the past.
For higher volumes, designs implemented in selected Altera FPGAs can be mapped directly to HardCopy® ASIC without the need for resynthesis or additional verification.
With a seamless migration path from FPGA to HardCopy ASIC now possible, a flexible microcontroller is both cost-effective and able to be specified exactly to customer requirements—with the features selected from a large library of predefined and scalable building blocks. The main differentiator to traditional microcontrollers is the seamless migration path from the prototype FPGA to the resulting microcontroller. Both the CPU and the bus architecture are unique to the flexible microcontroller concept and can be mapped to the design with the exact functions and features required for a specific customer application.
In Altera-enabled flexible microcontroller unit (MCU) applications, the Nios II embedded processor uses a standard RISC architecture. If needed, higher performance can be achieved by using multiple Nios processor instances, adding custom instructions, or using the award wining C-to-Hardware (C2H) acceleration compiler utility that can optimize C-language code with automatically built and instantiated hardware accelerators. Figure 1 shows an automotive infotainment platform that features multiple subsystems and scalable interfaces and functions.
Figure 1. Automotive Infotainment Platform using Microcontrollers
Implementing a Microcontroller in an FPGA
Because the complexity of an automotive microcontroller system is much higher than a pure graphics controller, the FPGA is used as the prototyping logic in most cases. Prototyping with an FPGA dramatically minimizes the development risk because it offers opportunities for comprehensive verification, firmware development, and field testing. Also, by using an FPGA for prototyping, you can run the device in-system to exercise it using a real-world situation, allowing identification of potential design flaws that may not have been detected during simulation.
New features and functionalities may also be required that were not part of the original specification (refer to Figure 2). Whether to fix previously undiscovered flaws or to add new features, prototypes with FPGAs can be modified quickly, without large nonrecurring engineering costs or long manufacturing cycles.
Figure 2. FPGA to ASIC Integration Allows Ramping Up Controller Performance and Features (Lower Axis)
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