Toshiba Launches General-Purpose System Power IC for Automotive Functional Safety

More and more safety-critical automotive systems, such as electric power steering (EPS) and braking, are required to meet the requirements of ASIL-D^[2], the highest automotive safety integrity level prescribed in the ISO 26262 functional safety standards.

The new IC integrates various failure detection functions, such as high-voltage and low-voltage detection and overheat detection of power supply circuit, to monitor against the IC’s own failure, and a watchdog timer to monitor failure detection of the external microcomputer. An initial diagnosis circuit to detect latent faults in the failure detection circuits is also incorporated to secure higher functional safety.

Toshiba has also carried out a range of functional safety analyses to simulate system failures and will provide customers with documentation, such as functional safety FMEDA^[3], to support overall safety analysis and design.

Built-in 4 series power supply^[4] circuits (4 outputs)

The IC incorporates four series power supply circuits receiving the 6V input generated by the DC-DC converter.
It also incorporates a circuit with a 5V constant voltage (current capacity is 400mA) for the microcomputer, and three circuits with 5V constant voltage output (current capacity is 100mA) for sensors and other interfaces. Each of them can output a voltage independently.