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Microchip offloads tasks to hardware to accelerate design

Thu, Feb 13, 2020

More Core Independent Peripherals are combined in the latest PIC microcontroller family from Microchip. The PIC18-Q43 family moves software tasks to hardware for a faster system response. Microchip has also introduced a development tool ecosystem for real-time control and connectivity design projects.

Microchip’s PIC18-Q43 family’s peripherals are configurable and to allow near-zero latency sharing of data, logic inputs or analogue signals without additional code for improved system response. The PIC microcontroller family can be used to create custom hardware-based functions in real-time control and connected applications, including home appliances, security systems, motor and industrial control, lighting and the IoT. According to Microchip, the PIC18-Q43 family helps reduce board space, bill of materials (BoM), overall costs and time to market.

Core Independent Peripherals (CIPs) are designed with additional capabilities to handle a variety of tasks without the need for intervention from the central processing unit (CPU). CIPs include timers, simplified pulse width modulation (PWM) output, configurable logic cells (CLCs), ADCs with computation (ADCC) and multiple serial communications, designed for developers to customise a specific design configuration. The CLC provides programmable logic that operates outside the speed limitations of software execution, so that customers can tailor functions such as waveform generation or timing measurements. CLCs connect on-chip peripherals for hardware customisation and allow developers to customise a device with core-independent communication interfaces, including UART, SPI and I2C. Multiple DMA channels and interrupt management have been added to accelerate real-time control with simplified software loops.

The PIC18-Q43 family operates up to 5.0V which increases noise immunity and enables customers to interface to a wide range of sensors.

Microchip’s development tool suite has been created to offer users the means to quickly and easily generate application code and customise combinations of CIPs in a graphical user interface (GUI) environment.

The PIC18-Q43 family is supported by Microchip’s MPLAB X IDE and MPLAB Xpress IDE development environments, and MPLAB Code Configurator (MCC) a free software plug-in that provides a graphical interface to configure peripherals and functions specific to an application. There is also the PIC18F57Q43 Curiosity Nano development board which has programming and debugging capabilities.

http://www.microchip.com

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0.5mm FFC/FPC connector has single action lock

Tue, Feb 11, 2020

Able to withstand high operating temperatures, the FH67 series flat flexible cable/flat printed circuit (FFC/FPC) connectors have been introduced by Hirose Electric.

It can withstand higher operating temperatures than the standard FFC/FPC connectors, says Hirose, citing temperature ranges of up to 125 degrees C. With this heat resistance capability ensures the connector satisfies the needs of severe automotive requirements, adds the company.

The 0.5mm pitch FH67connector has a one-action lock which allows a FFC/FPC to be inserted into the connector without opening the actuator. This can be done with one hand or by automated machinery to save assembly time and reduce mating failure. Removing the connector can be done by one hand or by robot.

The FH67 series has an independent two-point spring contact design, which includes a wiping element that reduces contact failure due to dust intrusion.

The ground contacts allow a shielded FFC to be used which prevents electromagnetic interference (EMI).

The FH67 connectors are designed with 30 contacts and are low in height (5.2mm), for space constrained applications such as automotive equipment, smart home devices, medical equipment and other portable devices. The maximum rated current is 0.5A and operating voltage is 50V AC/DC. Operating temperature is -55 to +125 degrees C.

Hirose Electric is a Japanese manufacturer of high-quality connectors. Established in 1937, it uses advanced engineering services and worldwide manufacturing capabilities to provide technically advanced connector solutions for many industries including industrial, automotive, consumer, testing, broadcasting, and telecommunications. It prides itself on its customer service.

European offices were established over 30 years ago and in 2010, the various European offices were merged to form Hirose Electric Europe. The European headquarters is based in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Other European branches are located in Germany, the UK, France and Italy.

http://www.hirose.com/eu

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Snapdragon Ridge hails autonomous vehicles with customisable SoC

Mon, Jan 13, 2020

Scalable and open autonomous driving solutions from Qualcomm Technologies, a subsidiary of Qualcomm, consist of the family of Snapdragon Ride Safety system on chips (SoCs), Snapdragon Ride Safety Accelerator and Snapdragon Ride autonomous stack.

Snapdragon Ride aims to address the complexity of autonomous driving and advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) by leveraging power-efficient hardware, artificial intelligence (AI) technologies and what Qualcomm describes as a pioneering autonomous driving stack. The combination of Snapdragon Ride SoCs, accelerator and autonomous stack offers vehicle manufacturers a scalable solution designed to support three industry segments, namely: L1/L2 active safety ADAS for vehicles that include automatic emergency braking, traffic sign recognition and lane keeping assist functions, L2+ convenience ADAS for vehicles featuring automated highway driving, self-parking and urban driving in stop-and-go traffic and L4/L5 fully autonomous driving for urban driving, robo-taxis and robo-logistics.

The Snapdragon Ride platform is based on the Snapdragon family of automotive SoCs and accelerator. It is built on scalable and modular heterogenous high-performance multi-core CPUs, energy efficient AI and computer vision (CV) engines, and a graphics processing unit (GPU). It offers 30 Tera operations per second (TOPS) for L1/L2 applications to over 700 TOPS at 130W for L4/L5 driving. This enables it to be used in designs that can be passively or air-cooled to reduce cost and increase reliability by avoiding the use of expensive liquid cooled systems. It also allows for simpler vehicle designs and extends the driving range for electric vehicles (EVs), says Qualcomm. The Snapdragon Ride SoCs and accelerator are designed for functional safety ASIL-D systems.

The Snapdragon Ride autonomous stack is modular and scalable for automotive manufacturers to use optimised software and applications for complex use cases, such as self-navigating human-like highway driving as well as modular options like perception, localisation, sensor fusion and behaviour planning. This software infrastructure for Snapdragon Ride supports customer-specific stack components to be co-hosted with the Snapdragon Ride autonomous stack components.

The Snapdragon Ride integrated safety board support package has safe OS and hypervisors and operates within safety frameworks from automotive industry leaders, including Adaptive AutoSAR. It has optimised foundational function libraries for computer vision, sensor signal processing, and standard arithmetic libraries

AI tools for improving model efficiencies, as well as optimising runtime on heterogeneous compute units

Snapdragon Ride is expected to be available for pre-development to automakers and tier-1 suppliers in the first half of 2020 and the company anticipates Snapdragon Ride-enabled vehicles to be in production in 2023.

http://www.qualcomm.com

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Siemens and Arm partner to develop and validate automotive safety systems

Fri, Jan 10, 2020

To help automotive designers develop and validate electronic systems, Siemens has paired its PAVE360 software with Arm’s automotive IP in a partnership that will bring IP, methodologies, processes and tools together to help automakers, integrators and suppliers collaborate, design and bring to market their next-generation platforms much faster, says Siemens.

Bringing together IC methodologies, processes and tools will help the automotive supply chain solve design and verification challenges, by validating differentiated safety enabled systems, ICs and software solutions in the context of the entire vehicle the company added.

Siemens’ PAVE360 is part of Siemens Digital Industries Software’s Xcelerator portfolio. This partnership was formed to address the increasingly complexity in developing platforms to realise active-safety, advanced driver assistance, in-vehicle infotainment, digital cockpits, vehicle-to-vehicle/vehicle-to-infrastructure and self-driving vehicles. Advances in computing and sensor technology are enabling companies to redefine mobility beginning with the ICs and software within automotive electronics systems.

Siemens’ PAVE360 digital twin environment, featuring Arm IP, applies high-fidelity modelling techniques from sensors and ICs to vehicle dynamics and the environment within which a vehicle operates. Using Arm IP, including Arm Automotive Enhanced (AE) products with functional safety support, digital twin models can run entire software stacks providing early metrics of power and performance while operating in the context of a high-fidelity model of the vehicle and its environment.

Using PAVE360 with Arm automotive IP allows automakers and suppliers to simulate and verify sub-system and system on chip (SoC) designs and understand how they perform within a vehicle design from the silicon level up, before the vehicle is built. By rethinking IC design, manufacturers can consolidate electronic control units (ECUs), saving thousands of dollars per vehicle through reduced the number of circuit boards and lengths of wire within the vehicle design, says Siemens. These savings also reduce vehicle weight which can promote longer range electric vehicles (EVs).

Siemens‘ PAVE360 platform will be demonstrated in the Siemens Mobility booth at CES in Las Vegas (7 to 10 January 2020).

http://www.siemens.com

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Microchip offloads tasks to hardware to accelerate design

0.5mm FFC/FPC connector has single action lock

Snapdragon Ridge hails autonomous vehicles with customisable SoC

Siemens and Arm partner to develop and validate automotive safety systems

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