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“The MCUs support IGBT as well as SiC and GaN,” according to the company. “It has enough compute power to support six-phase or two three-phase motors controlled by dual 200 kHz control loops, while hosting AI, machine learning or other monitoring applications. It supports remote smart actuation applications using Time-Sensitive Networking Ethernet for zonal vehicle architectures”.
“S32K39 also provides flexibility to control up to quad traction inverters when coupled with the NXP S32E real-time processor, and can implement advanced traction capabilities for four-wheel-drive EVs in this configuration.”
This is the highest performance S32K family member, with four 320MHz Arm Cortex-M7 cores configured as a lock-step pair and two split-lock cores. Up to 6Mbyte of flash and 800kbyte of ram is available.
Then is DSP for filtering and machine learning algorithms, two motor control coprocessors and high-resolution PWM generation. S32K37 is a version without the two motor control processors, which the company sees being used in battery management.
There is ΣΔ and successive approximation analogue to digital conversion, and comparators, plus sine wave generation for resolver excitation and an ‘ASIL D software resolver’ it said.
Six CAN FD interfaces accompany the TSN Ethernet, and there are various programmable IOs.
A hardware security engine covers trusted boot, public key over-the-air updates and key management.
Packaging is 176LPQFP-EP or 289MAPBGA
The parts were developed with certified ISO/SAE 21434 cybersecurity and ISO 26262 functional safety processes, said NXP, adding that “S32K39 MCUs can be combined with the FS26 safety system basis chip and GD3162 isolated gate driver for an inverter control system. Both support ASIL D functional safety for traction inverter development”.
Sadly, beyond these brief details, the company is largely keeping the devices under wraps. “S32K39 and S32K37 silicon, documentation, software support and tools, and evaluation boards are available for select customers – NDA required”, it said.
Production release is planned for Q4 2023.
On-board charger and dc-dc conversion applications are also foreseen. As well as zonal architectures, the hardware isolation, time-sensitive networking and cryptography suit the parts to software-defined vehicles.
