ICs & Semiconductors Archives - Page 139 of 227

Infineon adds sound to ADAS systems

Wed, May 19, 2021

Adding the sense of hearing to advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), Infineon Technologies has partnered with Reality AI to integrate its Xensiv MEMS microphones to vehicles’ sensor systems. It enables cars to “see” around the corner and to warn about moving objects hidden in the blind spot or approaching emergency vehicles that are still too distant to see. Typically ADAS is based on cameras, radar or lidar so target objects have to be within the line of sight to be recognised by the system, which has proved a weakness for emergency vehicles as these can be heard much earlier than they can be seen and are therefore “invisible” to ADAS for a period of time.

Infineon’s Xensiv MEMS microphones are combined with Aurix microcontrollers and Reality AI’s automotive see-with-sound (SWS) system. Using machine learning-based algorithms, the system is able to detect emergency vehicles, cars and other road vehicles, even if they cannot be seen by drivers or detected by the sensors incorporated in the vehicles’ ADAS. Machine learning also ensures that the country-specific sirens of emergency vehicles are recognised around the world.

The automotive-qualified Xensiv MEMS microphone IM67D130A has an increased operating temperature range from -40 to +105 degrees C for use in harsh automotive environments. The low distortions (THD) and the high acoustic overload point (AOP) of 130dB SPL enable the microphone to capture distortion-free audio signals in loud environments for a reliable classification, even if the siren sound is hidden in high background or wind noise, says Infineon. This sound-base sensing technology can also enable other applications in vehicles such as road condition monitoring, damage detection or even predictive maintenance.

For processing the audio signal, the Reality AI software uses Infineon’s Aurix TC3x family of microcontrollers. The scalable microcontroller family offers a range from one to six cores and up to 16Mbyte of flash with functional safety up to ASIL-D according to the ISO26262 2018 standard and EVITA full cybersecurity.

The Xensiv MEMS microphone IM67D130A can be ordered now in a PG-LLGA-5-4 package.

http://www.infineon.com

> Read More

Magnetic position sensor meets ASIL-D for ADAS applications

Wed, May 19, 2021

The latest addition to the 3DMAG family of rotary and linear magnetic position sensor ICs for automotive and industrial applications has been announced by Allegro Microsystems. The A31315 sensor delivers the accuracy and performance needed to meet stringent ASIL-D requirements of safety-critical automotive applications, says the company.

Allegro’s 3DMAG sensors combine its planar and vertical Hall-effect technologies to measure magnetic field components along three axes (X, Y, Z). This enables true 3D sensing capabilities with a wide magnetic dynamic range without saturation, says Allegro.

The A31315 sensor is claimed to address the functional safety challenges posed by advances in advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and autonomous driving systems, by delivering the measurement accuracy necessary to meet the stringent requirements of safety-critical steering, braking, transmission and throttle systems.

The sensors’ flexible 3D Hall-effect front end and configurable signal processing architecture enable highly accurate, absolute linear position and rotary position measurements up to 360 degree. Existing Allegro 3DMAG devices, such as the ALS31300 and ALS31313 sensors, also support 3D magnetometer applications in which all three magnetic components (BX, BY, BZ) are required to track complex magnetic movements.

The A31315 is a highly accurate A31315 position sensor, says Allegro. It contains advanced on-chip diagnostic features to ensure reliable, safe operation and supports both rotary and linear position sensing with native angle error over temperature in any plane (less than 1.2 degrees over the operating temperature range). Following Safety Element out of Context (SEooC) functional safety guidelines, the A31315 supports ASIL-B (single die) and ASIL-D (dual die) system level integration in accordance with ISO 26262. It is also automotive-qualified to AEC-Q100 Grade 0.

The A31315 sensor is available as a single die in a compact SOIC-8 package, and as a fully redundant stacked dual die in a TSSOP-14 package for applications requiring redundancy or higher levels of measurement. Allegro says its stacked die construction closely aligns the sensing elements of both die, ensuring the measurement of nearly identical magnetic fields. This design enables the dual-die A31315 sensor to offer superior channel matching performance and tighter channel comparison thresholds common in fully redundant safety systems.

The 3DMAG sensors have a wide range of programmable channel trim and linearisation options which can be adjusted to the magnetic circuitry to optimise the sensors for accuracy and manufacturing efficiency in end-of-line programming times for specific applications. The sensors also offer low power consumption and flexible power management options, enabling battery life optimisation in portable applications, says Allegro.

The 3DMAG sensors support flexible low-voltage programming through sensor outputs regardless of the interface (e.g. analogue, SAE J2716 SENT, PWM, I2C), allowing direct programming by a microcontroller in embedded designs and simplifying the interface for end-of-line system calibration. This low-voltage programming option also opens up new system architectures with remote field-replaceable sensor module designs that can be programmed by the electronic control unit (ECU).

http://www.allegromicro.com

> Read More

Software and tools in Lattice’s latest FPGA stack accelerate automation

Thu, May 13, 2021

Development of factory automation and industrial robotics can be accelerated with the Automate stack, says Lattice Semiconductor. The stack includes software tools, industrial IP cores, modular hardware development boards, and software-programmable reference designs and demos. All help developers simplify and accelerate development of robotics and scalable multi-channel motor control with predictive maintenance and real-time industrial networking, says the company.

The latest addition to Lattice’s low power FPGA-based solution stacks offers scalable motor control, which accelerates the development of flexible motor control systems, including a GUI-based user interface for system monitoring and control. There is also predictive maintenance which minimises machine downtime by monitoring multiple motors in a system.

Another feature is embedded real-time networking which implements an extensible sense and control system for a large number of devices using a Lattice Nexus FPGA as the central controller.

For security there is the Cyber Resiliency feature which enables a hardware root-of-trust that can detect, protect, and recover from a firmware-based attack in real-time.

The stack has easy to use software design methodology, says Lattice, with support for Lattice Propel for simplifying development of industrial automation systems with software/hardware co-processing using an embedded RISC-V processor.

Lattice Semiconductor provides low power, programmable technology to solve customer problems across the network, from the edge to the cloud, in the growing communications, computing, industrial, automotive, and consumer markets.

http://www.latticesemi.com

> Read More

Reference IP accelerates creation of signal and data processing SoCs

Tue, May 11, 2021

Power signal and data processing SoCs can be created faster and for lower costs, says Sondrel, using its latest reference IP platform.

The SFA 300 reference IP is the latest addition to the. It is a semi-custom SoC design to which a customer’s IP can be added to create a bespoke solution for high performance data processing.

Each SFA 300 reference design has four CPU clusters. Several SFA 300s can be ganged together and synchronised via the PCIe interface to scale the processing performance. There is also the option to integrate accelerators and/or custom logic to further increase performance and minimise power requirements. Developers can use the SFA 300 to tailor designs for processing-intense applications such as 8K video, artificial intelligence (AI), facial recognition for surveillance, smart factories, blockchain servers and medical data analysis.

An ASIC with four CPU clusters is complex to design,” explained Rowan Naylor, a principal engineering consultant at Sondrel. “Moving data around the chip without bottlenecks needs a network on chip, a multi-width data path, internal RAM, scaled and distributed across the design for optimal performance, and data conflict arbitration”. He also went on to explain that data security aspects are required in the Arm-based security sub-system, such as activity/intrusion detection. These function are in the SFA 300 IP platform, which allows engineers to reduce the design time and costs by up to 30 per cent, declared Naylor.

The SFA 300 framework design enables it to be scaled to suit the application as well as be the basis for different solutions of varied processing power capabilities. The four CPUs can be chosen to suit the processing power need by each of the four channels of the chip because the interconnects on and off the CPUs are standardised. This standardisation of interconnects on the boundaries of IP blocks and the rest of chip enables most other IP blocks such as memory to be also exchanged as required.

If the processing power required is greater than can be achieved by upgrading the processors, then several chips can be ganged together to form a cluster to achieve the processing power required with the limiting factor being the speed of inter-chip communications dropping as more chips are ganged together.

According to Sondrel, this is an inexpensive means of achieving a high-performance solution as it requires just one chip repeated several times rather than a more expensive, single chip solution. Typical performance figures are 4 tera operations per second (TOPS) for each channel for AI and 400 giga operations per second for each channel for DSP.

The SFA 300 can be used for image and video analysis, for example. For a static image, it could find a face or count the number of blood cells on a sample slide and a neural net could provide more sophisticated recognition for data analysis, explained the company. Treating a video as a series of images, it could deduce the direction and speed of an object of interest.

Another use case could be heavy duty number crunching such as for block chains and cryptocurrency mining.

The SPA 300 has low power consumption, making it suitable for battery powered applications, such as a drone. The powerful image processing capabilities and AI enable it to be used as an autonomous drone controller to fly the drone.

The SPA 300 is the third in the company’s Architecting the future IP platforms.

Sondrel offers a full turnkey service that turns designs into fully tested, shipping silicon.

http://www.sondrel.com

> Read More

Infineon adds sound to ADAS systems

Magnetic position sensor meets ASIL-D for ADAS applications

Software and tools in Lattice’s latest FPGA stack accelerate automation

Reference IP accelerates creation of signal and data processing SoCs

About Smart Cities