Accelerated electrification and autonomy are making it more difficult to develop battlefield equipment.
Toshiba Reduces Automotive Semiconductor Verification Time by 90%
Accu-ROM Unveils MBD Simulation Technology


As electric vehicles grow in popularity and advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) become standard, electronic components are becoming increasingly advanced and complex. Model-based development (MBD), a development methodology that uses software to simulate models and evaluate performance in real time, is enabling product developers to improve complex design processes. In the automotive industry, MBD accelerates development by simultaneously conducting design and verification before building prototypes.

MBD separates functions into multiple blocks and connects them to verify the overall vehicle operation. To verify thermal and electromagnetic interference (EMI), essential parameters for evaluating electrical components, detailed simulation models that include the semiconductor operation of individual blocks are required. However, as models become more detailed and precise, verification times increase.

Toshiba announced on the 23rd that it has developed MBD simulation technology that reduces automotive semiconductor verification time by approximately 90%. This 'Accu-ROM™' technology enables electronics developers to quickly evaluate designs using Toshiba's automotive semiconductors.

Subsystems like power steering consist of semiconductor-based electronic circuits that operate in microseconds, along with mechanical components, gears, and shafts that operate in milliseconds. Toshiba's current technology simultaneously simulates electronic circuits and mechanical components in microseconds, but this results in unnecessary and time-consuming calculations on the mechanical components.

It is also not simple because it adopts an electronic circuit simulation (SPICE) model that defines more than 100 parameters in semiconductor operation simulation.

Toshiba's new modeling technology, Accu-ROM, separates the electronic circuit and mechanical components for calculation. First, the mechanical components are verified, then the mechanical component model is simplified, and finally, the entire system, including the electrical circuit, is verified. This approach eliminates unnecessary calculations and automatically generates a VHDL-AMS model from the SPICE model when evaluating the electrical circuit.

The VHDL-AMS model reduces verification time by limiting the verification scope to essential parameters such as heat and EMI. With Toshiba's current technology, it takes 32 hours and 51 minutes to verify a power steering system, but with the new technology, that time is reduced to 3 hours and 27 minutes.

Accu-ROM technology accelerates the development of high-heat dissipation and low-noise automotive semiconductors, providing customers with a development environment that makes Toshiba products easier to use. Beyond automotive applications, it can also be applied to semiconductors for other industrial and consumer electronics applications.