Toshiba announces MCUs for electronic control units in automotive apps

SAN JOSE, USA: Toshiba America Electronic Components Inc. (TAEC) has announced two new 32-bit ARM Cortex-M3 core-based microcontroller (MCU) devices designed for use in automotive electronic control units, the electronic sub-systems within a car that control functions like power steering or the drive motor in hybrid and electric cars. Additionally, the TMPM350FDTFG and TMPM354F10TFG MCUs are both manufactured in compliance with the latest draft of the automotive industry's upcoming ISO 26262 safety standard.

"Once the ISO 26262 safety standard is published next year, the automotive industry will have a standardized approach for implementing fail-safe functionality in the MCUs used in the electronic control units of vital automotive systems," said Andrew Burt, vice president, Analog and Imaging Business Unit, System LSI Group, TAEC. "The market for MCUs that support the ISO 26262 standard is expected to grow rapidly and with the launch of these two new MCUs, Toshiba is well positioned to meet demand from automotive OEMs."

The TMPM350FDTFG MCU incorporates Toshiba's original programmable motor driver, an excitation signal (1) output circuit for resolvers and A/D converters. These features make the MCU a compelling solution for use in power steering control units, where enhancement of the external signal input from the motor and detailed setting of the output signal can deliver more precise steering to a driver.

The TMPM354F10TFG MCU is primarily designed to control drive motors in electric or hybrid cars. The device incorporates an on-chip resolver digital converter that converts signals from the motor resolver to digital data, yielding a smaller design footprint. While previous products used in drive motor control units only worked with rotation position sensors using excitation signals, the more versatile TMPM354F10TFG device also supports resolvers that do not use excitation signals by correcting sensor input signals.

Furthermore, the MCU reduces CPU operation cycles by more than 50 percent since it performs a motor's basic vector control operations in hardware; previous solutions could only support this function in software.