NXP与新网络芯片的汽车中的信息超载打架- eeNews Europe

NXP与新网络芯片的汽车中的信息超载打架

Feature articles | January 21, 2020

NXP Semiconductors, looking to defend its dominance in the market for chips used in cars, rolled out its latest line of networking chips for car manufacturers trying to fight information overload as well as overhaul the electronics architectures of cars.读米ore

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NXP said they would be used in the gateways that act as the car’s central communication node, coordinating all the CAN and other networks in the car and send data around the car and export it out to the cloud. The chip has 15 times the performance of NXP’s current range of networking chips while reducing power consumption. NXP said the S32G would be used in all new gateways that not only transfer data around the car but also take advantage of the data to support lane departure warnings and advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS)—as well as new services ranging from running diagnostics on the car to updating software from the cloud.

NXP said the S32G is based on lock-step Cortex-M7 microcontrollers and lock-step clusters of Cortex-A53 microprocessors that can support the ASIL-D standard. It also has dedicated network accelerators and encryption cores that send and secure data over CAN, Ethernet and other networks in the car, NXP said. Without acceleration, it would be impossible for the car to roll out new services with the deterministic networking needed by global OEMs.

“中央网关不仅是要发送data around the car anymore, it is also trying to run applications and services that can take advantage of all that data in cars and connect it to the cloud,” Brian Carlson, who leads product management for car networking processors at NXP, said ahead of the announcement at CES 2020. “But what we have seen is the need for more performance and networking to move all of that data around the car today.”

NXP, the world’s largest vendor of chips used in cars, has been struggling to chart its future in the looming age of autonomous cars. The company, hamstrung by Qualcomm’s failed bid to buy it, has been looking to repel rivals, including Intel and Nvidia, that have leapfrogged it in the development of artificial intelligence in cars. It is also fighting Infineon, Texas Instruments and Renesas in one of the big battlegrounds in the global chip business.

Qualcomm是全球最大的智能手机芯片供应商，也试图在汽车中刷新市场份额。高通公司在CES 2020推出了Snapdragon乘车计算机，以缓解自动驾驶汽车的工程挑战，包括车道出发控制和ADA。德州仪器还推出了其最新的ADAS SOC系列，该系列计划在2020年底开始销售，以及其他网络网关的芯片。

NXP, which accounts for half of all the networking connections in new cars, is trying to stay ahead of the swelling communications load in cars. NXP said that around half of all cars on the road are connected to the cloud, which along with advanced driver assistance systems, or ADAS, is adding to the data deluge. That includes data about road conditions, stop signs, weather and other cars, all of which is today channeled through the central gateway.

The car’s communication network has long been dominated by the Controller Area Network or CAN bus. The CAN standard coordinates all the microcontrollers and electronic control units, or ECUs, that handle functions ranging from the powertrain and transmission to door locks and air conditioning. Local interconnect networks, or LINs, have also been slapped on cars over time to run communications for seat, window, mirror, and other body controls.

But as more sensors and other electronics are added to the car to enable blind spot alerts and automated emergency braking, the traditional networks have been falling behind. The FlexRay standard, which is currently the fastest at 10 Mbps, has also been struggling to slog through all the data from the cameras, radar and other sensors in the car to model its surroundings. The CAN standard has speeds of up to 1 Mbps. LIN supports up to 20 Kbps.

Car manufacturers are supplementing all the legacy networks in the car today by adding Ethernet with 100 Mbps and 1 Gbps speeds. The autonomous car of the future—which will add more cameras, radar and other sensors to model the surroundings in blinding blizzards and heavy downpours and react to dangers on the road ahead—will need Multi-Gigabit Ethernet, NXP said. New services are also worsening the communications crunch in the car.

几十年来，制造商通过向车辆添加更多的ECU并将其连接到Can和Lin网络的网关来增加新功能。目前，这些模块中有100多个在整个汽车中都挤满了，以管理窗户，转向，信号和其他域，其中所有这些都在喷出数据。这些设备通过塞在仪表板，门后和地板下的大量电缆连接。

但是，汽车制造商现在试图将所有这些孤立的电子设备凝结成10至20个超级计算机，这些超级计算机散布在汽车的角落，并充当网关，并通过千兆以太网网络共享数据。NXP说，这将减少汽车中所有昂贵的电缆线束。每个框中的微控制器将被微处理器取代，这些微处理器可以重新编程，以便随着时间的推移将新功能推出新功能。

“They want to move to a more central compute architecture,” Carlson said.

NXP试图弥合汽车现在和未来电子体系结构之间的差距。S32G是该公司S32平台的一部分，该平台基于共同的体系结构，因此客户可以将软件从一代汽车交换为另一代汽车，并重用多达90％的研发工作。S32平台的目的是遏制成本，并将更安全，更“可升级的软件”汽车推出，比以往任何时候都更快地向大众市场推出。

The chip incorporates 20 CAN interfaces, up from 8 in its current generation of networking chips for cars. The chip also has 4 Gigabit Ethernet interfaces, up from 100 Mbps Ethernet in its current range of gateway processors. It supports the highest standard of functional safety for electronics embedded in cars, ASIL-D, up from ASIL-C in its previous generation. NXP said it has started supplyingthe new networking chip to early customers, including Audi.

该芯片还具有用于千兆以太网的网络加速器以及CAN，Lin，FlexRay和其他旧车网络标准。NXP说，如果没有加速，将通过在汽车周围发送和保护数据来陷入困境。通信引擎“卸载”大部分工作负载，因此Cortex-M和Cortex-A内核可用于汽车中的其他服务，包括Air Air（OTA）更新和云中的补丁。

The chip could also be used for running diagnostics on the engine, transmission or other parts. The chip could anticipate potential failures or parts that are wearing down, sending all that data to the cloud so that the manufacturer can send out replacement parts. Other services could share the location of potholes, debris or patches of invisible ice on the road ahead. “We are looking into how we can unlock more of the data in the car,” Carlson said.

S32G也是整合汽车周围的相机，雷达和其他传感器的所有数据，并将所有数据馈送到ADAS安全控制器中。NXP说，该芯片还具有PCIE Gen 3接口，因此它可以充当其他芯片的协处理器。为了防止失败，协处理器必须在驾驶汽车出发问题之前证实其同行的结果。

NXP said the S32G can also be used to secure the data shared around the car and swapped with the cloud. The chip incorporates a hardware security engine that serves as the root of trust, supporting secure boot to confirm that the system has not been infected by malicious code, and protecting against the pilfering of data in the car and the hijacking of the steering wheel or door locks. The encryption cores are barricaded from other blocks of the chip.