ICs & Semiconductors Archives - Page 112 of 230

Actuator and sensor control MCUs bring automotive control to the edge

Fri, Dec 17, 2021

Two microcontrollers (MCUs) released by Renesas Electronics are designed for automotive actuator and sensor control applications. The RL78/F24 and RL78/F23 have been added to the RL78 family of low power, 16-bit MCUs. The company says that, with these additions, the automotive portfolio offers customers reliable, high-performance devices for systems ranging from actuators to zone control.

Electrical and electronic (E/E) architecture is extending to include zone and domain control applications. This means control mechanisms have to evolve to accommodate body control for automotive systems such as lights, windows, and mirrors, motor control for engine pumps and fans and multiple sensor control. In future, high-speed and secure connectivity with zone and domain controllers will be mission critical for edge electronic control units (ECUs), advises Renesas. The RL78/F24 and RL78/F23 MCUs support the CAN FD high speed communication protocol (RL78/F24) and EVITA-Light security. They are also optimised for systems targeting ASIL-B levels under the ISO 26262 functional safety standard.

Using the actuator and sensor control MCUs enables developers to reuse most of their existing software assets, says Reneas, which reduces costs, yet still advances E/E architecture.

The future of automotive systems design lies in a vehicle-centralised, zone-oriented E/E architecture, the company maintains. This trend is creating higher demand for more advanced functionality and better performance in actuator controller applications. The RL78/F24 and RL78/F23 MCUs deliver up to approximately 70 per cent faster operating frequencies than the previous generation, which can more than double the performance in brushless DC (DLDC) motor control applications.

The hardware accelerator and timer functions for motor control have also been enhanced and a 12-bit ADC has been added.

The RL78/F24 and RL78/F23 MCUs have an operating frequency of 40MHz, on-chip flash memory capacity of 128 or 256kbytes and operate at temperatures up to 150 degrees C.

The MCUs support a selection of connectivity interfaces, including CAN FD (RL78/F24), LIN, SPI, and I2C. For security, there is support for EVITA-Light and for AES-128/192/256 encryption algorithms.

The additions to the RL78 family are pin-compatible and have the same energy efficiency.

Renesas also offers an RL78/F24 target board and is developing an RL78/F24 12V motor control evaluation system starter kit.

Sampling of the RL78/F24 and RL78/F23 MCUs will be available starting April 2022, with mass production scheduled to begin in the second half of 2023.

https://www.renesas.com

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Surface mount flyback converter ICs increase reliability says Rohm

Fri, Dec 17, 2021

AC/DC flyback converter ICs with an integrated 730V breakdown MOSFET make up the BM2P06xMF-Z series by Rohm. The BM2P060MF-Z, BM2P061MF-Z and BM2P063MF-Z are suitable for auxiliary power supply and switch mode power supplies for industrial drives as well as home appliances (including air conditioners and white goods), as well as for factory automation equipment. The flyback ICs require no additional heatsinks and no discharge resistors and capacitors. According to Rohm, they help designers to shorten design time, simplify the circuitry, reduce costs and increase reliability by offering integrated designs.

AC/DC converters for home and industrial use must not only support 85 to 264V AC to accommodate different AC voltages around the world, but must also comply with international standards such as Energy Star and the IEC 62368 safety standard. It is also important for AC/DC converter ICs to be surface mount to reduce factory mounting costs. High heat / high loss DMOSFETs and planar MOSFETs are still widely used in AC/DC converter ICs, however, because it has been difficult to provide tens of Watts of output power in a surface mount package. Rohm has developed the compact, surface mount, high power 45W models with an original low-loss SJ (Super Junction) MOSFET and optimised PWM control circuitry.

Adopting a surface mount package supports automatic board mounting (which was previously difficult to do in the past) and the implemented functions ensure compliance with the IEC62368 safety standard, even when the discharge resistor (a source of loss during standby) is removed.

Original low standby power control technology is applied for extremely low standby power consumption, reports Rohm. Supply voltages up to 60V (VCC) are also supported which eliminates the need for an external step-down power supply circuit.

According to Rohm, the converters reduce standby power by over 90 per cent compared to general products with equivalent performance, and reduce the number of power supply circuit components by four, contributing to greater power savings and higher reliability.

Suitable applications are consumer electronics such as air conditioners, appliances, monitors, and hair dryers, industrial equipment including inverters, AC servos, routers and office automation devices and AC/DC converters up to 45W output in consumer and industrial applications.

The BM2P06xMF-Z AC/DC converters are sampling now, with mass production scheduled for January. There is also an evaluation board available. The converters and board are available for purchase through online distributors Digi-Key, Mouser, and Farnell.

http://www.rohm.com

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ClockMatrix network synchroniser reduces jitter on optical networks

Thu, Dec 16, 2021

The second generation of ClockMatrix devices from Renesas Electronics build on the earlier synchronisers and jitter attenuators released by the company for 5G wireless and 100/200Gbits per second wireline network applications. The ClockMatrix 2 family of high-performance, precision, multi-channel timing devices are intended for 400/800Gbits per second optical transport and wireline network applications. They also improve on performance with phase jitter as low as 88fs rms.

The integrated devices provide all the functionality needed to implement an IEEE1588 clock solution with jitter attenuation capabilities, says Renesas, resulting in low jitter clock outputs for synchronous Ethernet PHYs with data rates up to 112Gbps PAM-4. They are also claimed to reduce design complexity and bill of materials (BoM) requirements, while allowing customers to apply the timing devices to a wide variety of network applications.

The industry’s move to 5G is pushing the limits of network speed and precision and raising the bar on clock jitter and synchronisation capabilities, observed Bobby Matinpour, vice president of the Timing Products division at Renesas.

The integrated, six-channel precision timing source eliminates the need for additional jitter attenuators for high-speed interfaces. The 88fs-rms phase jitter on clock outputs supports low jitter clock outputs for high-speed serial links (up to 112Gbits per second PAM-4 PHYs). The ClockMatrix 2 also supports multiple standards and protocols including synchronous Ethernet (Sync-E), and IEEE1588 and adheres to G.8262.1 and G.8262 telecomms boundary clock requirements and G.8273.2 Class C and Class D time accuracy.

The RC32614A ClockMatrix 2 system synchroniser is available now. Optional PTP Clock Manager software is also available free of charge under license for use with the RC32614.

Renesas Electronics delivers embedded design with microcontrollers, analogue, power and SoC products for automotive, industrial, infrastructure and IoT applications.

http://www.renesas.com

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S32G3 network processors extend to software-defined vehicle use

Wed, Dec 15, 2021

NXP Semiconductors has extended it S32G family of network processors with the S32G3 series. According to the company it now offers broad scalability from vehicle microcontrollers to higher-performance vehicle compute applications with software and pin compatibility.

There are four initial devices in the family, all software and pin-compatible with the S32G2 series which has been in full production since Q2 2021. They offer up to 2.5x more applications processing performance, on-chip system memory and networking than the current highest-performance S32G2 Series device. These capabilities allow them to enable more ECU consolidation and support intelligent software-defined vehicles, says NXP.

The S32G3 processors have more Ethernet bandwidth on two ports and on-chip system memory than the current S32G2 Series’ highest-performance device (S32G274A). They also double the number of isolation domains, which are critical for future ECU consolidation. The package pinout remains the same.

An EVB3 evaluation board, RDB3 reference design and GoldBox 3 rugged enclosure version, combined with a broad range of enablement software and the Vehicle Integration Platform (GoldVIP) for rapid connected gateway development are available to support evaluation, development, proof-of-concept and to accelerate time-to-market.

The addition of the new processors means that the S32G family now addresses a broader range of vehicle applications from safe microcontrollers to higher-performance domain controllers, safety processors and zonal vehicle compute applications.

The emerging domain and zonal architectures require the integration of more processing, memory, networking bandwidth and resource isolation to support software-defined vehicles, advises NXP. Intelligent connected vehicles demand more complex advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) safety and secure real-time and applications processing to offer vehicle and data-driven cloud services for smart cities and mobility.

The S32G family of devices is supported by a broad partner ecosystem offering operating systems, virtualisation, execution environments, applications software, boards, software tools, engineering services, deep-dive training and cloud services.

NXP helps customers design S32G system solutions with companion products. The SJA1110 multi-gigabit safe and secure automotive Ethernet switch is aligned to the latest TSN standards and offers integrated 100BASE-T1 PHYs, hardware-assisted security and safety capabilities and multi-gigabit interfaces. To ensure power management architecture and the safety concept scalability from S32G2 to S32G3, NXP developed the PF53 as a companion chip of the VR5510. The PF53 is a high-performance 12A core supply regulator with adaptive voltage positioning (AVP).

NXP also offers a range of in-vehicle network transceivers with CAN high-speed signal integrity and security innovations.

The initial S32G399A device has been sampled to lead customers with a production launch targeted for Q1 2023.

http://www.NXP.com

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Actuator and sensor control MCUs bring automotive control to the edge

Surface mount flyback converter ICs increase reliability says Rohm

ClockMatrix network synchroniser reduces jitter on optical networks

S32G3 network processors extend to software-defined vehicle use

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