Microprocessors

Infineon has had its forthcoming TC4x automotive microcontrollers cleared for safe AI processing by the Fraunhofer Institute for Cognitive Systems (IKS). “Embedded AI is becoming increasingly important for safety-critical real-time applications,” said Infineon. “However, this also creates new requirements and standards that must be considered during the complete product lifecycle.” The TC4x family includes ‘PPU’ (parallel processing unit), an AI-accelerator ...

NXP has announced a real-time processor for vehicle central control computers with 16 1.2GHz Arm Cortex-R52 processors. Hardware isolation and virtualisation are provided to allow sharing of on-die hardware between different code blocks without interaction “to support the consolidation of cross-vehicle electronic control units in vehicle central compute applications”, said NXP. “Vehicle functions can be independently managed, including fault handling ...

Silicon Labs has announced an Arm Cortex-M33 based family of secured wireless microcontrollers covering Matter, OpenThread, Zigbee and Bluetooth LE. Called xG26, it consists of MG26 devices for Matter, OpenThread and Zigbee, BG26 devices for Bluetooth LE and Bluetooth Mesh, and PG26 devices for the same processing power without wireless transceivers. “As users from consumer to industrial sectors extract more ...

Renesas is claiming “industry’s lowest overall power consumption for general purpose 32-bit MCUs” for its Arm Cortex-M23 based RA0 series. Consumption is 84.3μA/MHz and the company “offers a ‘software stand-by’ mode that reduces power consumption by a further 99% to 0.2 µA”, it said. Wake from this mode is in 4.6μs or less if the internal 32MHz oscillator is used. ...

Microchip has created an AVR microcontroller series with 12Mbit/s USB 2.0 and code protection. “As the next generation of Microchip 8-bit MCUs to integrate USB connectivity, the AVR DU family is designed to provide enhanced security features,” said the company. Protection comes from permanently disabling write capability within the programming and debug interface after initial programming, and handing over update ...

Alif Semiconductor has put an Arm Ethos-U55 neural processor alongside a Bluetooth Low Energy radio in a microcontroller for AI and machine learning workloads – all in a tine WLCSP package. It is called Balletto. “Balletto gives manufacturers the opportunity to implement AI/ML functions such as speech recognition, adaptive noise cancellation, vocal targeting and beam forming in true wireless stereo ...

Arm has announced its most powerful microcontroller-grade neural processor, which will reach 4Top/s in its maximum configuration and is 20% more power efficient that its previous neural processors. Named Ethos-U85 and configurable with between 128 and 2,048 MACs, it is intended to have enough performance to locally run heavy AI algorithms such as ‘transformers’, as well as convolutional neural networks. ...

NXP has finally revealed the wireless versions of its MCX microcontrollers, first announced in mid-2022. “Featuring the industry’s first MCU with Bluetooth Channel Sounding, NXP’s MCX W series enables edge devices with secure multi-protocol wireless for Matter, Thread, Zigbee and Bluetooth Low Energy,” according to the company, which explained: “Bluetooth Channel Sounding standard improves the accuracy and security of distance ...

Barcelona-based Semidynamics is aiming at next-generation AI chips and algorithms such as transformer with intellectual property called ‘All-In-One AI’. Rather than having on the same IC a multi-core CPU, a multi-core GPU for vector processing and a multi-core neural processor for tensor processing, it is advocating multiple instances of a block consisting of one out-of-order 64bit RISC-V CPU, one (GPU-like) ...

u-blox has announced four stamp-sized wireless MCU modules that can run user code and support Bluetooth LE 5.4, Thread, Matter and PSA Certified Level 3 security. ALMA-B10x versions are built around Nordic Semiconductor’s nRF54H20 wireless microcontrollers and have dual 320MHz Arm Cortex-M33 cores, dual 320MHz RISC-V cores, plus 2Mbyte of non-volatile memory and 1Mbyte ram. They also support NFC-A. NORA-B20x ...