Automotive FPGA Solutions

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Automotive FPGA Solutions [Copy link]

Analysts estimate that the combined revenue of automotive telematics services and hardware will exceed $20 billion in the next five years, and electronic component suppliers are actively investing in developing this emerging and rapidly expanding market. Overall, automotive electronics is expected to be a bright spot in the semiconductor industry, leading the entire industry out of the trough. Considering the total number of cars on the road today, the market development potential for automotive electronics is amazing, and there is still a huge room for development for the next generation of automotive electronic devices. As automakers integrate a variety of novel passenger safety, comfort, information and telematics devices, component suppliers are turning the industry's design challenges into opportunities for considerable profits.
The advantages of FPGAs and the mainstream needs of automotive electronics are beginning to coincide, allowing designers to use FPGAs to provide flexible solutions to meet consumer demand for the latest automotive electronic functions in all aspects, including safety, passenger comfort, information and telematics.

Automotive electronics engineers have traditionally used microcontrollers, custom ASICs, and bulky wiring harnesses to introduce and control electronic systems and expand functionality as vehicles evolve. However, the growing number of components (three years ago, an average car used about 20 microcontrollers, and now requires 40 to 60), increasing time-to-market pressures, and increasing performance requirements are all driving the emergence of new technologies.

User-customizable logic is the ideal solution

For example, many automotive designers are considering using in-cab networking systems to achieve more efficient management of in-vehicle communications and control functions. However, moving in-cab electronic systems to buses means facing emerging and changing standards. FPGAs are flexible, low-cost solutions that can be used to bridge between components or as glue logic for a variety of custom functions. Because FPGAs are standard products, programmable logic devices also avoid the obsolescence issues that plague most dedicated custom circuits.

One of the fastest growing application areas for user-customizable logic devices such as FPGAs is as a standardized development platform that can be expanded to meet the requirements of different customers. This makes FPGAs an important tool for accelerating time to market. And systems using the same components can provide multiple functional options to each customer who buys a car.

By building applications using the same FPGA, certain functions can be easily enabled or disabled. The FPGA can also be programmed to enable or disable any one of a series of functions.

However, using FPGA technology is important because it should be immune to outside tampering, preventing aftermarket hackers from trying to activate certain functions that should be dormant.

Anti-tampering technology

Car hackers often improve car performance by "adjusting" various car electronics, which often violates regional or national safety and environmental standards. These unapproved services are provided through a variety of channels, making them difficult to control. Many hackers enhance car performance by changing the normal setting standards of various on-board system components, modifying fuel delivery, electronic ignition timing, and other control functions. These changes often cause the car to be driven in violation of the manufacturer's use and warranty regulations. In addition, cunning hackers can provide options to reset the original factory settings, and then restore damaged and overused cars to meet the manufacturer's warranty conditions in order to obtain illegal warranty services.

FPGA security threats are also of particular concern to designers of telematics systems, as these systems are used as authorization mechanisms for paid service products, such as satellite communications and location services. If there are security concerns in the systems that manage gateway access control and user authentication, it will become a huge security hole in expensive satellite networks or other valuable wireless infrastructure. When low-cost applications are attacked by highly intelligent attacks, it is possible to cause the entire communication network to be damaged. More importantly, the revenue model of the pay-per-use system will be completely invalid, causing the company's revenue to decline or even go bankrupt.

Obviously, the choice of FPGA technology is extremely important for system security against intrusion and tampering. FPGA solutions range from very secure non-volatile Flash and anti-fuse architectures to unsafe volatile SRAM products that require power-on configuration. Industry experts generally believe that anti-fuse is the most secure FPGA architecture available.

Antifuse FPGAs are difficult to hack for several reasons. Attacking an antifuse FPGA requires determining the state of any particular fuse, but because fuses are tiny and numerous, it is nearly impossible to determine the location and programming state of each fuse. For example, Actel's new 2 million gate AX2000 antifuse FPGA contains approximately 53 million antifuses, and only 2-5% of them are used on average per design. Plus, probing to evaluate each fuse is likely to destroy the programming state required to track the design. This means that once an antifuse FPGA is programmed, it is impossible to read back the design contents or change any programming state to "tweak" the function, let alone change important engine control systems.

Reliability Factor

Due to cost pressure, the design and production of automotive electronics have been using the same materials, packaging and assembly technologies as other commercial products, which has forced many semiconductor suppliers to limit the standards of commercial platforms for use in more challenging environments. The ambient temperature range required for automotive electronics is -40℃ to +125℃, which is far beyond the standard commercial and industrial temperature range specified by many suppliers. However, FPGA suppliers such as Actel, which produce suitable devices for high-reliability applications such as commercial aviation and even military systems, will be able to provide customers with FPGA products that maintain high reliability and security in special environments.

Temperature is a dominant factor affecting the reliability of electronic devices. Since the device, package, and board can all fail, it is important to reserve margins at all levels of the automotive electronic system. FPGA suppliers such as Actel feature products with a wide military temperature range, which can better handle the coefficient of thermal expansion and avoid the effects of thermal stress. In addition, temperature cycling changes will cause low-cycle fatigue of solder joints. After a certain number of temperature cycles, cracks will appear on the surface of the device, and then continue to expand until it completely splits. Ensuring that automotive FPGAs can operate normally at the highest junction temperatures in the industry is another way to minimize the risk of functional degradation and failure.

Another factor that affects reliability is the logic confusion caused by neutron bombardment. This problem used to only occur in high-altitude applications, but as semiconductor manufacturing processes become smaller and smaller, electronic devices used on the ground are also more and more prone to logic confusion. If a unit of an SRAM structure FPGA is confused, it may cause the FPGA to lose configuration information. This situation may cause the host system to fail. Radiation test data shows that Actel's anti-fuse and Flash-based FPGAs will not lose configuration information due to logic confusion caused by neutrons, so they are very suitable for applications that require high reliability.

Target solution

To meet the needs of the automotive electronics market, Actel has developed three superior FPGA product lines based on Actel's proprietary anti-fuse technology. These new automotive product lines are ideal devices for integrating a variety of logic functions that usually require multiple CPLDs, PALs, and FPGAs to implement, and are available in a variety of device densities, operating voltages, and functions to quickly develop cost-effective products. These devices provide solutions with system gate counts ranging from 3,000 to 100,000, all of which have been verified to work properly at the industry's highest junction temperature (+150°C) (ambient temperature is -40°C to +125°C).

Actel's antifuse FPGAs are non-volatile and can store configuration information indefinitely without the need for external memory. Eliminating the need for external memory to store configuration data eliminates the need for a PROM or microprocessor and the associated circuit board space. Another feature of Actel's antifuse technology is its inherent low power consumption. The antifuse has a very low impedance and does not require active circuitry to maintain charge, thereby reducing circuit heating and power design issues.

brushwood

Thank you for your hard work

bbs510

Well written.....................

bbs510

Thank you for the article, I learned a lot................

dukedz

Well, it seems that military-grade FPGAs are not exported.

zhoujoe

Oh, hackers also want to invade FPGA?

爱好汽车电子

Thank you very much. My major is automotive electronics.

jjkwz

The factor that affects reliability is the logic confusion caused by neutron bombardment. This problem only occurred in high-altitude applications in the past, but as semiconductor manufacturing processes become smaller and smaller, electronic devices used on the ground are also more and more prone to logic confusion. If a unit of an SRAM structure FPGA is confused, it may cause the FPGA to lose configuration information. This situation may cause the host system to fail. Radiation test data shows that Actel's anti-fuse and Flash-based FPGA will not lose configuration information due to logic confusion caused by neutrons, so it is very suitable for applications that require high reliability.

meng1833

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