Microchip Technology Inc. is all in on supporting automotive applications, demonstrating its latest technologies at CES 2024. Demos ranged from facial recognition systems using the PolarFire SoC FPGA to AC bidirectional electric vehicle (EV) chargers that leverage its full portfolio.
(Source: Microchip Technology Inc.)
Over the past year, the biggest trends in automotive include safety advances, particularly for automated driving, support for software-defined vehicles and the transition to new architectures that simplify networking but also require new processing and imaging technologies. The automotive industry is also making big investments in electrification.
Microchip recently announced an expansion of its Detroit Automotive Technology Center in Novi, Michigan. The 24,000-square-foot facility is designed for automotive customers to get support from technical experts and to develop new solutions for their applications. The completion of phase three of the expansion project more than doubled its lab space, adding new labs focused on high-voltage and e-mobility applications. Microchip also has Automotive Technology Centers in Munich, Shanghai, Tokyo and Austin, Texas.
Inside Microchip’s Detroit Automotive Technology Center (Source: Microchip Technology Inc.)
“The original lab was set up for our application engineers to work on a day-to-day basis, but it wasn’t really where you could bring a customer’s application in and have the customer work with you,” said Joe Thomsen, corporate vice president of Microchip Technology’s MCU16 business unit, in an earlier interview and virtual tour of the lab expansion. “For the new space, it’s much more intended for collaboration with the tier-one automotive suppliers and OEMs to work together.”
Joe Thomsen, Microchip Technology
Thomsen said the lab works in two ways. Customers either have a new application and Microchip collaborates with them to develop a solution, even helping them write some of the code or design the board or the customer has already selected a Microchip part, but they are having some issues.
Traditionally, a customer would send its equipment, boards and details about the problem and Microchip would try to recreate it, Thomsen added. “With the new lab, and I think that especially being in the Detroit area where there are so many automotive suppliers, we can have those customers come into the office and work with us. The efficiency goes up by a factor of two or three, so instead of having back and forth communication over a period of days or weeks you can solve it in a day or two.”
The Detroit Automotive Technology Center features two new labs. The high-voltage lab focuses on demonstrations of reference designs, featuring Microchip’s silicon carbide (SiC) mSiC solutions, dsPIC digital signal controllers and analog and mixed-signal solutions, while the human machine interface lab supports the development of full-width cockpit displays, touchscreens, Knob-on-Display (KoD) solutions as well as buttons, sliders and wheels with EMC testing.
SiC high-voltage lab area (Source: Microchip Technology Inc.)
The lab provides support for central compute and zonal networks in ADAS platforms that use Microchip’s PCIe Gen 4 and Gen 5 switching hardware, single-pair Ethernet devices and development tools, as well as USB and networking development resources for pre-certification of multimedia infotainment systems and media hubs for advanced USB Type-C 3.2 protocol applications. It also offers die- and product-level characterization of automotive MEMS resonators and oscillators, including vacuum and wafer-scale probe and test, long-term aging, frequency stability, phase noise and jitter test capability.
Onsite security training also is available where customers learn how to implement secure elements in applications such as secure boot, message and hardware authentication and includes the development of automotive security solutions using Microchip’s CryptoAutomotive TrustAnchor ICs.
In the automotive market the two mega trends are autonomous driving and e-mobility, Thomsen said. “Those are the two major areas where we’re focused on going forward. So, most areas of the lab focus on the electrification of cars as well as having more compute capabilities and more communication of data for autonomous driving.”
CES demos
At CES, Microchip hosted Electronic Products with a virtual tour of several demos for key automotive focus areas including automotive Ethernet, security, EV charging and advanced driver monitoring.
The first demo focuses on security and automotive Ethernet. The 10BASE-T1S MACsec demonstration shows the need for secure communication on 10BASE-T1S Ethernet. MACsec is used to protect the various nodes, or ECUs, against hacker attacks.
Demonstrating Ethernet in vehicle networking with the MACsec security protocol, the demo— using emulated ECUs— starts with a system running without MACsec enabled. Initially the system is running as expected, using either touch or on-display knob control, to control things like fan speed and temperature, as well as monitoring the Ethernet traffic.
Microchip then shows how easy it is to hack into a network that does not have MACsec enabled, using a hacker board to send spoof messages. All traffic on the bus is blocked and the board is sending random traffic to different parts of the system like servos and fans, resulting in the loss of network control.
Once MACsec with the MACsec key agreement protocol is enabled—each of the nodes have a secure element, which is responsible for the keys associated with authenticating the message, Microchip regains control of the system, and everything is operating normally. On the screen there are still hacker messages flooding the bus, in red, but since they are unverified and unauthenticated, the ECUs ignore the messages.
10BASE-T1S MACsec security demonstration (Source: Microchip Technology Inc.)
Microchip also demonstrated how a public AC bidirectional EV charger system works. This is a level-2, three-phase public AC bidirectional EV charger reference design demo, emulating a fast-charging station, which delivers up to 22 kW of power with on-board Class 1 energy metering and fault detection. It leverages Microchip’s expertise in a variety of electronic devices, including microcontrollers, microprocessors, power supplies and real-time clocks as well as connectivity technologies like Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and NFC.
The reference design includes a GUI with touch input, Wi-Fi, Ethernet and LTE communications to the cloud using OCCP 1.6/2.0.1 protocols (the demo used OCCP 1.6 to communicate with the management software for monitoring and control); BLE communications with a mobile app; and CAN and HomePlug Green PHY power line communication to the vehicle in accordance with ISO 15118.
The EV charger demo showcases a very modular design, where different blocks can be adapted for the application for greater design flexibility and faster time to market, Microchip’s spokesperson said. It can be adapted to work on single phase or three phase and for residential or public applications.
Public AC bidirectional EV charger demo (Source: Microchip Technology Inc.)
Once the charge button is “clicked” in the demo, authorization and start transaction responses from the server are shown on the display. When the charging starts, it sends one meter reading every couple of seconds, though the intervals for the readings can be changed. The meter data is sent from the charger to the server. Once the charge gets to 100% or if the charging is stopped manually, a summary of the data is shown on the display or app.
The next demo is a 10BASE-T1S lighting wall. The demo shows the advanced technology used in automotive lighting, which also can be used in non-automotive applications.
10BASE-T1S transmits 10 Mbit/s over a single pair of wires, connecting all of the different devices, including sensors and actuators, as part of an Ethernet architecture, leveraging all of the benefits of Ethernet, the Microchip spokesperson explained. “The advantage is that you don’t need to translate between different technologies and different types of networking protocols.”
In this demo,19,200 LEDs are connected via an Ethernet network and controlled in real time. It shows all the LEDs in sync, eliminating the need for custom drivers and making it much easier to manage. It also shows the low latency of using Ethernet when changes are made.
10BASE-T1S LED demo (Source: Microchip Technology Inc.)
The next demo targets AI-based facial recognition using Microchip’s PolarFire SoC FPGA. The demo also shows how the technology can be used for object detection and license plate reading solutions.
There is a huge variety of applications for the same technology running on the PolarFire SoC FPGAs, Microchip’s spokesperson said, including facial recognition, object classification, traffic monitoring systems, license plate detection, driver monitoring systems and access control systems.
Facial recognition demo using Microchip’s PolarFire SoC FPGA (Source: Microchip Technology)
“For driver monitoring systems, if you want to monitor whether your driver is attentive on the road or if the driver is talking to someone on the phone, as long as you have a model that detects those things the underlaying technology is exactly the same,” Microchip said.
Other demos include automotive cabin solutions for dashboard features and vehicle safety including the maXTouch technology KoD solution. These are all on display at the Microchip booth, Venetian Convention Space, Second Floor, Titian 2205/06.
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