Supplying safety controllers and safety power ICs for drive systems

Infineon Technologies announced that it is expanding its collaboration with NVIDIA for safe autonomous driving. Infineon's AURIX TC3xx series automotive microcontrollers are used in the NVIDIA DRIVE Pegasus AI automotive computing platform. The supercomputer for autonomous driving meets the Level 5 autonomous driving requirements defined by the SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers).

Infineon supplies safety controllers, safety power supply ICs, and selected vehicle communication interface ICs for various NVIDIA DRIVE systems. These devices enhance levels of autonomous driving capability, ranging from auto cruise to auto chauffeur and fully autonomous driving.

Through the collaboration between Infineon and NVIDIA, platform users can access AURIX capabilities via an AUTOSAR-compatible software stack. This allows for the reuse of high-level application code and reduces development time by 20 to 40 percent compared to existing platforms.

For over 30 years, Infineon has been providing critical safety and reliability technologies for all stages of autonomous driving. “The collaboration between Infineon and NVIDIA to develop multiple generations of DRIVE automotive computers provides the automotive industry with a consistent platform for developing driver assistance systems and fully autonomous driving systems at all levels,” said Ritesh Tyag, Head of Infineon’s Silicon Valley Automotive Innovation Center (SVAIC).

Multicore microcontrollers enable the platform to meet the highest level of functional safety standards (ISO 26262 ASIL-D) for ADAS (Advanced Driver Assistance Systems) and fully autonomous driving systems. The AURIX TC3xx series enables the implementation of a scalable and efficient platform with significantly improved performance compared to the previous generation.

With regard to ADAS and autonomous driving functions, AURIX microcontrollers support ASIL-D applications with safe computational performance of over 3,000 DMIPS, hardware self-test mechanisms for logic and memory, integrated monitoring, and redundant peripherals. Furthermore, the next-generation AURIX provides a higher level of integration, enhanced high-speed connectivity interfaces, and advanced security features.

The microcontroller serves as the core layer of the platform's safety monitoring framework and performs monitoring functions for the SoC. AURIX plays a critical role in DRIVE Pegasus achieving system-level ASIL-D safety. It also manages the driving sequence and monitoring of warning signals for the autonomous driving platform. Furthermore, the AURIX microcontroller provides key in-vehicle interfaces for multiple network communication channels, such as CAN-FD, Gigabit Ethernet, and FlexRay.