TI MCUs advance system efficiency, safety and sustainability

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Texas Instruments (TI) has introduced two new series of real-time microcontrollers that help engineers deliver more intelligent and secure processing in automotive and industrial applications.

Credit: TI

The TMS320F28P55x series of C2000 MCUs is a portfolio of real-time microcontrollers with an integrated neural processing unit (NPU), enabling fault detections with high accuracy and low latency. The F29H85x series is built on TI’s new 64-bit C29 digital signal processor core and offers an advanced architecture with integrated safety and security features.

“Engineers increasingly strive to design automotive and industrial applications that are more energy efficient and can make faster decisions, driving a need for more scalable processing power, expanded memory, and on-chip safety and security enablers,” said Amichai Ron, senior vice president, TI Embedded Processing. “The introduction of enhanced real-time performance and edge AI in our C2000 portfolio will empower engineers to solve more complex problems and reach higher levels of system efficiency, safety and sustainability.”

Engineers are under pressure to provide more accurate, intelligent decisions in real time to perform functions such as arc fault detection in solar and energy storage systems and motor-bearing fault detection for predictive maintenance.

As the industry’s first real-time MCUs with an integrated neural processing unit, TI’s C2000 TMS320F28P55x series addresses these challenges by ensuring consistent performance with real-time processing.

The NPU in the TMS320F28P55x series offloads the execution of the neural network model from the main CPU, achieving five to 10 times lower latency than software implementations to enable faster, more accurate decision-making. In addition, the model that runs on the integrated NPU learns and adapts to different environments through training, helping systems achieve greater than 99% fault detection accuracy to enable more informed decision-making at the edge.

TI’s complete AI toolchain, which includes models that are optimised and tested for specific applications, can help engineers with any level of experience easily complete the AI model development process.

Designers are looking for a single MCU with more flash memory, larger computational capabilities and more integrated functionality. This need is particularly evident as vehicles shift from discrete solutions to integrated solutions, where a single chip is capable of handling various computational and housekeeping functions within the powertrain.

TI’s C29 core, with its 64-bit architecture, delivers more than double the real-time signal-chain performance of the C28 core.

Featuring comprehensive diagnostics and error-checking mechanisms, the F29H85x series was engineered for compliance with International Organization for Standardization 26262 and International Electrotechnical Commission 61508 automotive and industrial safety standards, with levels up to ASIL D and SIL 3.

These MCUs also provide cybersecurity capabilities, with a fully isolated hardware security module that protects systems from unauthorised access and cyberthreats. Additionally, TI’s proprietary safety and security unit provides runtime safety and security without a performance penalty using an advanced, context-aware memory protection unit for hardware isolation of CPU tasks, with freedom from interference and self-test processes.