TTTech and Infineon to speed up the development in autonomous driving

Under the guidance of AUDI AG, TTTech developed the central platform control unit “zFAS” integrating various functionalities of advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS). The ECU also enables comprehensive fusion of sensor data. Microcontrollers from Infineon Technologies AG (FSE: IFX / OTCQX: IFNNY) safeguard that highest requirements towards computing performance and safety are met.

zFAS addresses the rapidly increasing performance demand of active and passive assistance systems. It enables new functions such as piloted driving on congested highways and piloted parking. Requirements concerning functional safety, connectivity and computing capacity have reached new levels. The demand is driven by functional integration and the fusion of safety critical sensor data. The developers of the multicore processing platform took this specifically into account: an important part of the platform controller is TTTech’s Deterministic Ethernet, a reliable, real-time-capable Ethernet backbone solution. It enables the combination of data traffic of different criticality with a high data throughput. Furthermore, TTTech’s TTIntegration is used as middleware to run the application functions on top of the networked multiple microcontrollers.

In alignment with Audi, TTTech selected AURIX™ TC297T microcontrollers from Infineon for zFAS. The AURIX family offers a broad range of microcontrollers including advanced multicore products for highest requirements. “We are delighted to provide our high-performance AURIX microcontrollers as the centerpiece for the future-proof platform solution zFAS,” said Thomas Boehm, responsible for Autonomous Driving MCUs at Infineon. “Thus, we are further expanding a fruitful partnership with TTTech.” Infineon’s AURIX TC297T microcontrollers with their lockstep architecture and a special safety management unit can host multiple safety-related functions up to ASIL D.

“zFAS marks a milestone for highly integrated platform control units for advanced driver assistance,” said Marc Lang, Director Sales & Marketing at TTTech Automotive. “Infineon’s advanced microcontrollers and TTTech’s real-time Ethernet solutions are key components for this innovative ADAS solution.”

In addition, based on Deterministic Ethernet and Infineon’s AURIX TC297T, TTTech has developed an evaluation platform for driver assistance system ECUs, called TTA Drive. It enables customers to quickly and simply integrate different application modules at an early stage of series development. This integration process is supported by a software named TTIntegration and a tool-set specifically developed for TTA Drive.

In the scope of a capital increase in March 2015, Infineon acquired a stake in TTTech which is specialized in highly reliable, networked and safety-relevant control systems in vehicles.

TTTech has been using Infineon solutions for years, including the powerful XC2287 CPU for the general purpose control unit family HY-TTC 50. Infineon’s AURIX microcontroller has further been integrated in TTTech’s new Automotive Ethernet switch Hermes for the evaluation of multiple communication standards including Audio-Video Bridging (AVB), Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN) and Time-Triggered Ethernet (SAE AS6802).