NXP Processors Deliver Performance and Safety for Next-Gen Electric and Autonomous Vehicles

NXP Semiconductors has announced a new family of high-performance safe microprocessors to control vehicle dynamics in next-generation electric and autonomous vehicles. The new NXP S32S microprocessors will manage the systems that accelerate, brake and steer vehicles safely, whether under the direct control of a driver or an autonomous vehicle’s control.

Today’s car is evolving from a machine that takes simple instructions from a human driver to an increasingly sophisticated computing platform that senses, thinks and acts autonomously. Traditionally, vehicle control systems responded directly to a driver’s commands. In autonomous systems by contrast, it is the car that gives those commands and then must execute them flawlessly to guarantee safety in all conditions. This need for safe guaranteed control has driven a rapid growth in demand for high-performance, safe computing solutions to control the “start, stop and steer” functions fundamental to all mobility.

NXP has met the needs of carmakers developing future autonomous and hybrid electric vehicles with a newly available 800MHz microprocessor/microcontroller. The first of the new S32 product lines, the S32S microprocessors offer the highest performance ASIL D capability available today. The NXP S32S processors use an array of the new Arm Cortex-R52 cores, which integrate the highest level of safety features of any Arm processor. The array offers four fully independent ASIL D capable processing paths to support parallel safe computing. In addition, the S32S architecture supports a new “fail availability” capability allowing the device to continue to operate after detecting and isolating a failure – a critical capability for future autonomous applications (more info).