Scaleo chip enters automotive powertrain semiconductor market

SOPHIA ANTIPOLIS, FRANCE: Scaleo chip, the leading fabless semiconductor company in body control and driver-information car electronics, announced today its entry into the automotive powertrain semiconductor market.

The constant growth of vehicles in use raises increasingly key questions concerning environmental, health and dwindling energy resources. On a global scale, road transportation accounts for 16 percent of the total CO2 emissions and 50 percent of global oil consumption. In order to remain sustainable, our society urgently needs new mobility solutions to limit as much as possible the negative impacts on climate, health and the economy.

Governments are therefore pushing strong policies, at home and internationally, to reduce pollutant emissions and energy consumption by enforcing new standards/regulations and stimulating their industries.

The social responsibility of carmakers is to deliver clean and energy saving vehicles. Among the different car technologies, the powertrain domain (i.e. consisting of engine and transmission) represents the most significant area of potential improvements. After decades of slow evolution, the automotive powertrain industry is now faced with major systems renewals, at rates never experienced before.

By 2020, the average fuel consumption of the 90 million vehicles produced annually will have to be reduced by more than 30 percent. By the same time, the amount of in-vehicle electronics will have doubled.

Scaleo chip is now part of this global effort for a greener and safer mobility future with the announcement today that it has entered the powertrain semiconductor market, offering cutting edge technologies that address three challenges: energy efficiency of the engine, electronics systems increasing complexity and the in-vehicle extension of the networking. These technologies are at the heart of the “OLEA” project, delivering breakthrough automotive powertrain MCU (MicroController Unit).

OLEA is developed within the NextSTEP (Next Solution for Thermal and Electrified Powertrain) program, actively supported by OSEO, a French public-sector institution who finance innovative projects brought by SME’s. OLEA provides solutions for advanced internal combustion engine vehicles (ICEV), hybrid electric vehicles (HEV) and electric vehicles (EV).

“For the first time in our company history, we are at the cutting edge of technologies that are not only smart, practical and cost saving, but above all, technologies that contribute to the global effort for a cleaner planet and for sustainable development.” says Bruno Paucard, president and CEO of Scaleo chip.

In order to address the increasing demand for powerful, adaptable, portable and reliable powertrain electronic architectures, OLEA features unique patented breakthrough technologies that enable energy saving flexible hardwired powertrain control, multi-core based system integrity and deterministic Ethernet communication. Customers will benefit from hardware and software portability, reusability and real-time responsiveness of the complete powertrain control system as well as complex engine functions and high integration capabilities.

In addition to ensure the reliability of the embedded electronics, Scaleo chip multi-core based ISO 26262 functional safety technology enables customers to better segregate functions, to lower systems cost and to shorten time-to-market. The real-time and deterministic Ethernet technology supports the increasing interactions betweens powertrain ECUs and other car ECUs required by the new mobility together with networking simplification and wiring weight reduction.

Scaleo chip will demonstrate these technologies over 2012. Additional communications will describe in depth the developments and results.