SoMs for vehicles are functional safety-qualified
A system on module (SoM) based on the NXP S32G399A vehicle network processor has been introduced by MicroSys Electronics. The miriac SoM is qualified for functional safety applications and joins the company’s SoM family for the control of smart vehicle networks.
Based on the S32G399A processor, the module offers 33 per cent higher real-time data processing performance for mixed-critical safety applications, than the earlier model, and 2.5 times more application processing performance.
Major improvements include octal eight Cortex-A53 cores instead of four, as well as four Arm Cortex-M7 dual-core lockstep pairs instead of three in the earlier version.
The S32G3’s eight Arm Cortex-A53 cores with Arm Neon technology are organised in two clusters for applications and services. For real-time tasks, the S32G3 has four dual-core lockstep Arm Cortex-M7 pairs for which MicroSys offers support for dedicated FreeRTOS implementations beside NXP’s standard automotive support.
Clustered and operated in lockstep mode, the set of heterogenous cores of the S32G3 can support ASIL D applications or any other functional safety standard comparable to IEC 61508. The miriac MPX-S32G399A SoM integrates 4Gbyte of soldered LPDDR4 RAM at 3,200Mtransfers per second, up to 32Gbyte eMMC non-volatile memory and 64Mbyte QuadSPI flash. External SD card storage can be multiplexed with the on-board eMMC.
The SoM offers a range of generic and communication interfaces including four SerDes interfaces configurable as PCIe Gen3 2×1 or 2×2, three 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet and three Gigabit Ethernet, 18 CAN FD bus, two FlexRay and four LIN ports. There are also 14 GPIOs (general purpose I/Os), 12 analogue inputs (ADC), four FlexSPI, two UART, one USB and four I2C interfaces. For trace and debug tasks, the SoM supports Aurora and JTAG interfaces. A board support package including bootloader configuration and all required Linux drivers are also available.
Target applications are real-time connected vehicles, mobile machinery and automotive test and measurement equipment. The SoM could also be used for data loggers, edge gateways and fail-safe programmable logic controllers (PLCs).
The NXP S32G vehicle network processor is intended for ASIL D safety applications in OEM and Tier-1 automotive applications. MicroSys Electronics said it extends its application areas to SIL certifications where functional safety standards analogue to IEC 61508 are required, including railway technology (EN 50155), aviation (DO-160), stationary and mobile machinery (ISO 13849), as well as manufacturing robots (ISO 10218), control systems (IEC 62061), and drive systems (IEC 61800 5 2). Approvals in the aviation context (DO-254/DO-160) can be supported with manufacturer documentation.
The miriac MPX-S32G399A SoM is available now for approved OEM evaluation purposes including the carrier board, cable set and cooling solution. Larger lots in series production quality are scheduled to become available in Q1 2024.
