NXP Semiconductors has introduced a new family of high-performance safe microprocessors to control vehicle dynamics in next-generation electric and autonomous vehicles. The new NXP S32S microprocessors will manage the systems that accelerate, brake and steer vehicles safely, whether under the direct control of a driver or an autonomous vehicle's control.

Traditionally, a car's vehicle control systems respond from driver's commands to guarantee safety in all conditions. Cars, however, have started to evolve and integrate sophisticated compute platforms that have the ability to sense, think, and act autonomous.

NXP's S32S processors deliver safe dynamic control
for electric and autonomous vehicles (Credit: NXP)

NXP has met the needs of carmakers developing future autonomous and hybrid electric vehicles with a newly available 800MHz microprocessor and microcontroller. The first of the new S32 product lines, the S32S microprocessors offer the highest performance ASIL D capability available today.

The NXP S32S processors use an array of the new Arm Cortex-R52 cores, which integrate the highest level of safety features of any Arm processor. The array offers four fully independent ASIL D capable processing paths to support parallel safe computing. In addition, the S32S architecture supports a new fail-availability capability, which allows the device to continue to operate after detecting and isolating a failure, a critical capability for future autonomous applications.

NXP has partnered with OpenSynergy to develop a fully featured, real-time hypervisor supporting the NXP S32S products. OpenSynergy's COQOS Micro SDK hypervisor platform takes advantage of the Arm Cortex-R52's special hardware features. It enables the integration of multiple real-time operating systems onto microcontrollers requiring high levels of safety (up to ISO26262 ASIL D). Multiple vendor independent OS/stacks can also run on a single microcontroller. COQOS Micro SDK provides secure, safe and fast context switching ahead of today's software-only solutions in traditional microcontrollers.

The NXP S32 platform is a fully-scalable automotive computing architecture that offers a unified architecture of microcontrollers and microprocessors and an identifical software environment that can reduce development effort and maximizing software reuse across products and applications. The NXP S32 architecture addresses the challenges of future car development designed to allow carmakers to bring rich in-vehicle experiences and automated driving functions to the market.