In recent years, MCU manufacturers have continued to carry out product iterative innovation, and MCU has shown many new trends and expanded its application scope. And it is already a mature product technology type, which can be applied to artificial intelligence, new storage, biometrics and other technical fields, which may be an important reason why it was out of stock at the beginning.
"High CPU Clock speed + advanced technology" meets high performance
With the extension of cloud computing to the edge, edge computing realizes the sinking of resources and services to the edge, thus reducing interaction delay, reducing network burden and optimizing business services. MCU, as the core of edge computing devices, needs to have stronger processing and computing capabilities, and support high-speed communication, analysis of various communication protocols, and even integration of embedded AI. Higher performance, more intelligence and greater integration have become a trend of MCU development in recent years. For example, NXP's latest S32K39 series MCU integrates DSP, supports machine learning algorithm, provides flexible digital filtering, supports TSN Ethernet, and integrates performance, integration, network, information security and functional security, which is quite different from MCU in the traditional sense.
In order to achieve changes, MCU manufacturers generally adopt the methods of increasing the clock speed and configuring multiple kernels to improve the processing and computing capabilities. S32K39 is equipped with four Arm Cortex-M7 cores operating at 320 MHz. In order to deal with the power consumption caused by high clock speed, manufacturers have adopted more advanced chip manufacturing technology. According to Jin Guangyi, Marketing Director of GigaDevice Semiconductor, currently MCU manufacturing process mainly stays at 40nm or even older technology nodes, but more and more manufacturers are actively deploying 28nm, 22nm or even 16nm. The process of MCU is constantly evolving, and advanced technology can produce chip products with high performance, low power consumption and low cost.
Configuring coprocessor is also one of the strategies for MCU manufacturers to cope with high performance and high integration. For example, MCU products with high computing power can integrate embedded neural network processor (NPU) as coprocessor, and support edge computing such as local speech recognition, face recognition, keyword wake-up and artificial intelligence algorithms such as TinyML. ECU controller can be integrated with motor control coprocessor to achieve higher performance and precision control. In a word, MCU in the future will assume more and more local computing power.
Thus, Brian Carlson, Global Marketing Director of Vehicle Control and Network Solutions of NXP Semiconductors, stressed that balance will be important in MCU design. The performance of the chip can be achieved through many aspects, such as configuring multiple cores, hardware accelerators, special processors and so on. In fact, more focus on the whole design is in specific application scenarios, the better its energy efficiency will be, that is, to ensure the appropriateness of chip design, selected kernel, power consumption and technology, and finally achieve the balance between performance and power consumption.
A new attempt to embed new memory in vehicle MCU
Memory cell is an important component of MCU. MCU generally integrates CPU, SRAM, non-volatile memory such as NAND and abundant special peripherals, among which memory cell has an important impact on MCU performance. However, with the passage of time, flash memory has gradually become one of the bottlenecks restricting MCU to improve performance and reduce power consumption, especially in the automotive field. Automobile chips have higher reliability and durability requirements, and the flash memory integrated in vehicle MCU has too few erasable times, which makes it unsuitable as data memory. It makes more and more MCU manufacturers choose to integrate new memories in MCU, such as Resistive Random Access Memory (RRAM), Phase Change Random Access Memory (PCM) and Magnetic RAM (MRAM).
Infineon and TSMC recently announced that they are working hard to add RRAM to Infineon's new generation AURIX series MCU. RRAM, like NAND, is nonvolatile, does not lose data when it is powered off, allows bit-by-bit writing without erasing, and can be extended to 28 nm or even more advanced processes. It can be said that RRAM is a more ideal embedded memory.
STMicroelectronics is the supporter of PCM in MCU embedded memory. In 2018, STMicroelectronics announced that the technical architecture and performance standards of 28nm FD-SOI automotive MCU with built-in ePCM began to provide customers with MCU samples equipped with ePCM. In August 2021, STMicroelectronics began to deliver its first batch of Stellar SR6 series automotive MCUs using ePCM to major automobile manufacturers, and plans to mass-produce them in 2024. ePCM can provide faster reading and writing speed, and the cost of integrating ePCM storage elements with 28nm embedded flash memory is lower, so it has greater development potential in automotive applications.
Renesas supports the application of MRAM technology. MRAM has the characteristics of non-volatile, high reading and writing times, fast writing speed and low power consumption. At the VLSI seminar in June this year, Renesas announced that it has developed a circuit technology for STT-MRAM test, which is manufactured by 22 nm process and has fast read and write operation.
In view of the development of automotive MCU, Zhao Kun, deputy director of China Automotive Electronics Division of Renesas Electronics, pointed out that automotive electronics is undoubtedly still the next application hot spot, especially the development of new energy vehicles has brought new development opportunities to this market. New energy vehicles can better adopt a new generation of electronic and electrical architecture because they don't have too many old technologies. The use of domain controllers will put forward new and higher requirements for MCU, and at the same time promote faster iterative update of products.
The biometric module is loaded, and the MCU security function is being upgraded
With the development of the Internet of Things, it presents diversified application characteristics. Based on the consideration of networking and remote information interaction, security has gradually become the basic requirement of the Internet of Things for MCU. More and more MCUs begin to configure data encryption, secure memory and other features. In some applications, they also have high security authentication requirements. In financial applications, the current mainstream solution is to form an overall solution with special security chips. With the technological progress and application development, it is an inevitable trend to improve the security level requirements of MCU and meet the requirements of special application scenarios.
STMicroelectronics recently announced that it has completed EMVCo1 certification of its STPay-Topaz-Bio biometric payment card platform. The platform is packaged together with STM32L443 MCU of STMicroelectronics in a module conforming to EMV specification. STM32L443 MCU can provide a variety of defense measures, including biometric template matching for card-holder authentication. ST point out the certification confirmed the security of the platform and its interoperability with the payment system.
Although NXP LPC55S69 does not integrate biosecurity module, it integrates various security encryption functions. It not only supports TrustZone and provides reliable security features, but also the PRINCE module encrypts the data written to Flash on the chip at the same time, supports simultaneously decryption during reading, supports AES-256 and SHA1/Sreal HA2, and provides security measures such as SRAM PUF generation and key storage. LPC55S69 can be said to be the most Internet of Things security products in LPC5500 series.
The integration and support of security modules such as biometrics will become an important direction of MCU development in the future. Chen Jiangshan, product director of Arm China, pointed out in an interview that a safer platform architecture can ensure information security in the era of Internet of Everything and should become an industry standard.
Ultra-low power consumption has gradually become a new market for MCU
Power consumption has always been an important index to measure MCU, especially after the Internet of Things applications gradually entered the industrial and consumer fields, a large number of low-power consumption demands have emerged in applications such as water and gas heat meters, wearable devices, medical electronics, smart homes, remote measurement and control, wireless sensors, etc., so that low-power micro-controllers have become a market segment of MCU. Relevant information shows that low-power micro-controllers account for about 15% ~ 20% of the global micro-controller market share.
Many international manufacturers have laid out in the low-power field very early, facing the conventional low-power application field, and have formed a series of product layouts, such as STMiconductor, Microchip, SiliconLabs, Texas Instruments and other manufacturers have their own low-power products. Renesas Semiconductor introduces RE series of ultra-low power micro-controllers. The chip adopts its unique SOTB process, which can reduce the running power consumption and standby power consumption at the same time. The current consumption of RE series micro-controllers can be as low as 25 μ A/MHz in working state and as low as 400nA in standby state. And ultra-low power consumption index can significantly prolong the battery life of embedded devices.
Hu Xiaoyu, general manager of Beijing Zhongke Xinrui Technology Co., Ltd., pointed out that low-power micro-controllers usually adopt different design methods and process choices from general-purpose micro-controllers to reduce energy consumption and leakage current of micro-controllers, so that micro-controllers can work longer under the premise of using the same energy, and provide longer endurance for devices powered by batteries or energy collection. In Internet of Things applications such as wearable electronics, portable medical electronics, sensor terminals and remote measurement and control, "intelligence, miniaturization, light weight and long battery life" are the continuous goals pursued by terminal nodes, and low power consumption is the most critical factor to achieve this goal.
Accelerate technology R&D upgrade,MCU chips break into new markets -(exportsemi.com)
