Infineon Technologies AG and TSMC today announced the companies are preparing to introduce TSMC’s Resistive RAM (RRAM) Non-Volatile Memory (NVM) technology into Infineon’s next-generation AURIX microcontrollers (MCU).
Embedded Flash microcontrollers have been the main building blocks of automotive electronic control units (ECU) since the introduction of the first engine management systems. They are essential components for clean, safe, and smart cars, used in propulsion systems, vehicle dynamics control, driver assistance, and body applications. They enable major innovations in the automotive space with regard to electrification, new E/E architectures, and automated driving. Currently, the majority of MCU families in the market are based on embedded Flash memory technology. RRAM is the next step in embedded memories that allows to further scale to 28nm and beyond.
The Infineon AURIX TC4x microcontroller products combine performance extension with the latest trends in virtualization, security, and networking features to enable the next generation of software-defined vehicles and new E/E architectures. TSMC and Infineon successfully created the basis for the introduction of RRAM in the automotive domain. This will put AURIX microcontrollers on a broader technology and supply basis. RRAM offers high disturb immunity and allows bit-wise writing without the need of erasing. Endurance and data retention performance has comparable performance with Flash technology.
“TSMC and Infineon have a long track record of successful collaboration, including the first AURIX generation with TC2x products. We have also partnered on RRAM NVM technology for almost a decade in a range of different applications,” said Dr. Kevin Zhang, Senior Vice President of Business Development at TSMC. “Moving the TC4x to RRAM will open new opportunities in terms of shrinking MCUs into smaller nodes, and we are excited to be working with a leader like Infineon.”
“AURIX TC3x is well established as a first-choice automotive microcontroller in many applications domains. AURIX TC4x based on TSMC’s RRAM technology further expands this success with increased ASIL-D performance, artificial intelligence capabilities and the latest networking interfaces including 10Base T1S Ethernet and CAN-XL,” said Thomas Boehm, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Automotive Microcontrollers. “RRAM technology creates a significant potential for performance expansion, power consumption reduction, and cost improvement.”
