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News Article

STMicroelectronics and Freescale drive automotive cooperation

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Freescale Semiconductor and STMicroelectronics have achieved critical milestones in the advancement of their joint design program aimed at accelerating innovation in the automotive industry.

Since announcing their initiative seven months ago, the two companies have staffed joint design facilities, designed a next-generation microcontroller core, defined product roadmaps, and aligned process technologies.

"Building on our long-term relationship, STMicroelectronics' and Freescale's engineering teams have rolled up their sleeves and jumped into all facets of the joint design program," said Ugo Carena, corporate vice president and general manager of the Automotive Products Group of STMicroelectronics. "We've established a hierarchy, staffed several design sites, set up global logistics, and designed a microcontroller core that will be a basic building block for many future designs. This has been an unprecedented effort and demonstrates the tremendous value both companies will realize from the joint development initiative."

The two companies have opened joint design centres to provide broad access to global design talent in silicon, software, and automotive applications. The two companies anticipate reaching a headcount of 120 engineers by the end of the year.

As part of their far-reaching collaboration, Freescale and ST have standardized on Power Architecture technology as the instruction set architecture for jointly developed microcontroller (MCU) products. The two companies also are focusing product development efforts on a wide range of automotive applications, including powertrain, chassis, motor control, and body systems. One of the most noteworthy achievements of the collaboration to date is the joint definition and development of a power-efficient, 32-bit microcontroller core based on the Power Architecture e200 core. One indication of the cooperation's success is ST's decision to migrate its future automotive MCU designs to these and other derivative cores.

"The speed at which we defined and agreed upon a next-generation core built on Power Architecture technology underscores the strength and momentum of our collaboration," said Paul Grimme, senior vice president and general manager of Freescale's Transportation and Standard Products Group. "Our commitment to develop an optimized core and implement it in an application-specific MCU sets a high bar for innovation. As we move from design to production, customers will benefit from the dual-source availability of our jointly designed automotive MCUs."

Freescale and ST plan to manufacture jointly designed MCU products on mutually aligned 90-nm process technology. The companies have achieved the milestone of aligning a process test vehicle at Freescale and ST wafer fabs. In addition, joint development of non-volatile memory (NVM) technology is underway. Forthcoming MCU products are expected to be designed to integrate cost- and performance-optimized flash modules for specific automotive applications. The companies expect future design and development activities will extend into additional applications, such as safety systems, driver assistance, and driver information.

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