STMicroelectronics has announced the launch of the Stellar series products equipped with xMemory, a new generation of scalable memory embedded in its Stellar series automotive microcontrollers. This product innovates the challenging aspects of developing software-defined vehicles (SDVs) and the evolution of electrification platforms.
Previously, users had to manage multiple devices with different memory options, along with the associated development and certification costs. The Stellar products equipped with xMemory introduce a single device with scalable memory, providing customers with an efficient and cost-effective solution.
This simplified approach allows automotive manufacturers to adapt their designs to future development needs, leaving room for additional innovation later in the development cycle, reducing development costs, and accelerating time-to-market through a simpler supply chain. The Stellar products equipped with xMemory will first be applied to the Stellar P6 microcontroller (MCU), which is designed for the new trends and architectures of electric vehicle (EV) powertrains and is expected to enter mass production in late 2025.
Automakers need to achieve seamless integration of software and hardware to maximize reuse across different platforms, extend vehicle lifetimes, and enhance digital capabilities. With the emergence of new features and regulations, the significant memory demands of artificial intelligence and machine learning applications, and the push for over-the-air (OTA) updates, software complexity is increasing, making memory a bottleneck. STMicroelectronics’ xMemory addresses this challenge by expanding memory during the development phase or after the vehicle is in use, providing users with unlimited application upgrade possibilities.
Choosing the right microcontroller at the beginning of the software-defined vehicle lifecycle ensures sufficient on-chip memory for future software development. Today, selecting a microcontroller with excessive memory specifications increases costs, while choosing one with insufficient memory may require finding and re-certifying a different microcontroller with additional memory later, adding complexity, cost, and causing delays. STMicroelectronics claims that the Stellar microcontrollers equipped with xMemory are competitively priced, offering additional cost savings, simplifying the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) supply chain, and accelerating time-to-market by extending product lifecycles and maximizing reuse across projects, thereby reducing certification time.
STMicroelectronics has been at the forefront of the transition from flash memory (Flash) to embedded non-volatile memory (eNVM) technology in automotive microcontrollers, launching the first 28nm eNVM certified for automotive applications, which is also the core of xMemory. STMicroelectronics’ embedded phase change memory (ePCM) has the best power, performance, and area (PPA) metrics among non-volatile memory technologies such as resistive random access memory (RRAM), magnetic random access memory (MRAM), and flash memory.
With the industry’s smallest eNVM cell size, phase change memory (PCM) manufactured at 18nm and 28nm nodes offers double the memory density of other technologies.
The latest generation of PCM technology will be applied to all upcoming Arm architecture-based Stellar P and G series automotive microcontrollers. The Stellar series is designed for automotive applications, simplifying vehicle electrical architectures to enhance power, flexibility, and safety. The product lineup includes Stellar integrated microcontrollers (Stellar P and Stellar G series) for centralized areas and domain controllers, which integrate the functions of multiple independent communication and control electronic control units (ECUs); as well as Stellar electrification microcontrollers (Stellar E series) optimized for electric vehicle traction module power converter control.
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