High reliability, high safety, and high performance of the E3 products
Providing comprehensive options for smart vehicles
On April 12, 2022, Shanghai — Xinchip Technology, a global leader in automotive-grade chips, launched the high-performance and highly reliable automotive MCU E3 “Control Core” series products, which can be comprehensively applied in safety-critical applications such as drive-by-wire chassis, brake control, BMS, ADAS/autonomous driving motion control, LCD dashboards, HUD, and streaming visual systems CMS.
The E3 series products from Xinchip Technology are based on the ARM Cortex-R5F architecture, with a CPU clock frequency of up to 800MHz. The E3 features up to 6 CPU cores, with 4 cores configurable as dual-core lockstep or running independently, filling the gap in the domestic high-end, high-safety-grade automotive MCU market.
Even before its official launch, nearly 20 customers had already designed products based on the E3. Currently, samples and development board applications for the entire E3 product line are open to customers, with mass production expected in the third quarter of this year. Xinchip will provide a complete toolchain support from chips to development kits and design solutions, committed to creating a complete ecosystem for users.
Fu Bingfeng, Executive Vice President and Secretary-General of the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, stated at the launch conference that currently, there is a continuous shortage of global automotive chips, and strengthening the innovation, research, and production of key core chips is a long-term task. “We are also pleased to see companies like Xinchip that continuously innovate and refine their work stand out. In the context of a global chip shortage, Xinchip’s R&D and mass production speed contributes to the automotive industry.”
High reliability and high safety: Filling the domestic market gap
The E3 ensures stable operation of vehicles with extremely high safety and reliability.
Automobiles, unlike consumer electronics, carry the most precious lives and cannot afford any risk. Therefore, high reliability and high safety are the most important characteristics of automotive-grade chips. The design of the Xinchip Technology E3 MCU set very high stability and safety targets from the outset. Even globally, there are very few automotive MCUs that can simultaneously meet both AEC-Q100 Grade 1 and ISO 26262 ASIL D standards.
First, the automotive reliability standard AEC-Q100 Grade 1 requires chips to be usable in most automotive application environments with ambient temperatures ranging from -40°C to 125°C. The E3 series MCUs from Xinchip Technology can stably operate for extended periods under thermal conditions of up to 150°C.
ASIL is a risk classification system defined by the ISO 26262 standard for the functional safety of road vehicles, with ASIL D being the most stringent level. The E3’s functional safety level supports ASIL D, utilizing dual-core lockstep Cortex-R5, achieving up to 99% diagnostic coverage, and configuring error checking and correction (ECC) on all SRAM, with end-to-end (E2E) protection on safety-related peripherals.
Qiu Yuqing, CEO and co-founder of Xinchip Technology, stated: “From the moment we were established, we completed the automotive process certification for ISO26262 ASIL D functional safety level. Subsequently, we obtained AEC-Q100 reliability certification, ISO26262 functional safety product certification, and national secret certification, becoming the first automotive chip company in China to achieve ‘four certificates in one.'”
Breaking the performance ceiling of automotive MCUs
With the transformation of automotive electronic and electrical architecture, the demand for high-performance automotive MCUs will continue to rise.
In the trend of intelligence, connectivity, and electrification, Xinchip Technology’s launch of high-performance automotive MCU products also contributes to enhancing supply chain resilience and addressing the automotive “chip shortage.”
The entire E3 series MCUs from Xinchip Technology adopt TSMC’s 22nm automotive-grade process. The design team at Xinchip has worked tirelessly to increase the ARM Cortex-R5F CPU clock frequency to 800MHz.
Compared to the widely used 100MHz MCUs in current vehicles, and some high-performance MCUs operating at 200-300MHz, the increase in E3’s clock frequency is not just a numerical change, but a comprehensive enhancement in processing capability and real-time performance, which will bring richer applications to future vehicles, achieving smoother chassis control, ensuring more precise battery management, and perfectly supporting the service-oriented architecture required for future smart vehicles.
The E3 “Control Core” series (E3600/3400/3200 series, E3300 series, and E3100 series) features flexible configurations, with CPUs available in single-core, dual-core, quad-core, and hexa-core options, clock frequencies ranging from 300MHz, 400MHz, 600MHz to 800MHz, integrating a rich set of communication peripheral modules, and built-in hardware accelerators compliant with national secret commercial secret standards 2/3/4/9, while also supporting both BGA and LQFP packaging.
The E3 products have a wide range of application scenarios, suitable for BMS, brake control, drive-by-wire chassis, ADAS/autonomous driving motion control, body control, gateways, T-Box, HUD, LCD dashboards, streaming visual systems CMS, and more.
Providing good chip products while offering a complete ecosystem is essential to help customers quickly bring products to market. On the AUTOSAR basic software, Xinchip has completed adaptations with major domestic and international AUTOSAR vendors such as Vector, EB, PwC, ETAS, Neusoft Ruichi, and Hengrun (in no particular order); in the development environment, Xinchip can also support IAR, Greenhills, and GCC compilers; in the HMI part, the E3 is compatible with the latest QT for MCU, achieving rich display effects through multi-layer and hardware acceleration.
With the official release of the automotive MCU product line, Xinchip Technology’s strategic deployment of four major product lines: smart cockpit, autonomous driving, central gateway, and high-performance MCU has been fully realized. This is also Xinchip’s preparation for the upcoming central computing. Based on these product combinations, Xinchip is planning a complete central computing architecture — Xinchip Central Computing Architecture SCCA 1.0. This architecture supports safe and reliable task deployment while having flexible system expansion capabilities.
In the future, the product line comprehensively laid out by Xinchip Technology will continue to upgrade and iterate, providing a solid foundation for the upgrade of the smart automotive industry.
About Xinchip Technology
Xinchip Technology is committed to “Defining the future with chips, empowering smart mobility”, providing high-performance and highly reliable automotive-grade chips for future smart mobility, and is the first automotive chip company in China to achieve “four certificates in one.”
Xinchip’s products and solutions cover smart cockpit, autonomous driving, central gateway, and high-performance MCU four major businesses, targeting various core application scenarios for future smart vehicles. Xinchip’s automotive-grade chips have achieved large-scale mass production, serving over 250 customers and covering more than 70% of automotive manufacturers in China.
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