Infineon and Magneti Marelli promote regional control unit innovation with the AURIX™ TC4x MCU family

Infineon Technologies AG, a global semiconductor leader in power systems and the Internet of Things, and Marelli, a leading technology provider for the automotive industry, are collaborating to develop advanced E/E architecture solutions. The collaboration combines the expertise of both companies in the automotive sector and uses Infineon's latest AURIX™ TC4x microcontroller to develop an innovative area control unit (ZCU).

Infineon's AURIX™ TC4x family is designed for the new E/E architecture, which extends the capabilities of automotive microcontroller units (MCUS) for safe and reliable processing. The MCU family supports high-speed communication interfaces such as multi-Gbit Ethernet, PCI Express, and new interfaces such as CAN-XL and 10BASE-T1S, providing outstanding performance, data throughput, and flexibility as automakers implement next-generation E/E architectures.

Ravi Tallapragada, President of Magneti Marelli's Electronic Systems business, said: "Magneti Marelli and Infineon have a long history of cooperation, and this joint development of the ZCU is another big step for both parties. With the support of infineon, Marilyn to strengthen itself when it enters the area architecture domain as carmakers partners. This partnership allows us to deliver market-leading products that will drive the arrival of software-defined vehicles and solidify our industry-leading position in the ZCU space."

Lars Wemme, Senior Vice President, ADAS, Chassis, E/E Architecture Product Line, Infineon Technologies, said: "We are delighted to have established a mature and solid partnership with Magneti Marelli, which demonstrates our shared pursuit of excellence and innovation. With the new MCU, we are helping Magneti Magneti Marelli drive its innovative solutions and lead the growing OEM regional control market."

By adopting Infineon's AURIX™ TC4x, Magneti Marelli has established a ZCU platform with important features that contribute to the development of advanced software-defined vehicles, including:

1.Data routing engine: ensures ultra-low latency communication and improves the efficiency and speed of vehicle data transmission.

2.Virtualization Integration: Allows for independent software updates, which is essential to keep up-to-date features while the system is not down.

3.Lighting control software integration: Innovative lighting control systems can be integrated into the ZCU, laying the foundation for future McU-free headlights.

 AURIX™ TC4x is a key technology for enabling software-defined vehicles that provide robust safety performance through an enhanced security cluster and is ISO/SAE 21434 compliant. The integrated data routing engine reduces CPU load during data transfer, while the virtual machine acts as a virtualization layer to consolidate applications developed on multiple operating system platforms onto a single AURIX™ TC4x platform. This, together with hardware protection mechanisms that support virtualization, facilitates the integration of different applications, ensuring that each application has its own allocated resources and requirements.