Efficient and high-performing vehicle architecture: Cooperation of Continental and Infineon

Continental will be collaborating with the semiconductor manufacturer Infineon Technologies AG in the development of server-based vehicle architectures. The goal is an organized and efficient electrics/electronics (E/E) architecture with central high-performance computers (HPC) and a few, powerful Zone Control Units (ZCU) instead of up to a hundred or even more individual control units, as it was previously the case

Zone Control Units are key for the software-defined vehicle.

Continental now uses Infineon's AURIX TC4 microcontroller for its ZCU platform. Thanks to special storage technology in the AURIX TC4, the vehicle software is on standby. As soon as the vehicle is started, functions such as parking assistance, air conditioning, heating and suspension are ready within fractions of a second. With its platform approach, Continental is supporting the different requirements of the automobile manufacturers. By individually configuring the number of HPCs and ZCUS, how they interact and how they are arranged in the vehicle, automobile manufacturers can individually tailor their architecture to their needs.

The third generation of the AURIX microcontroller family, TC4x, offers the same scalability in terms of performance, memory and housing variants as the previous generations, AURIX TC2x and TC3x. Among other things, AURIX TC4x was designed for usage in ZCU and HPC. Further focus applications are radar, chassis and safety and powertrain/electrification.

The AURIX TC4x product family puts a focus on state-of-the-art cybersecurity functions, developed according to the ISO/SAE 21434certified process.