 Hello and welcome back to the embedded world 2023 and thanks for stopping by at the exhibitors forum here in hall 3. Our next topic today is ST microelectronics how stellar microcontrollers boost electrical vehicles performance and our speaker today is Francesco Petrozielli from ST microelectronics. Enjoy! Good morning everybody if you are working in the automotive electrification area or if you are simply interested in brainstorming with ST on how this journey is evolving combining electrification and the other mega trends then you are in the right room today so as introduced my name is Francesco Petrozielli I'm with ST microelectronics responsible for regional marketing automotive microcontrollers and processors and what today I would like to introduce you is how ST is innovating in the digital world to address the challenges and the opportunities of the electrification application automotive because electrification compared to the other mega trends is real so we have cars running on the road driving on the road since years but we are at the beginning so we are just starting and there is much more to come so what I want to discuss with you is what we believe the combination of multiple mega trends software defined vehicle and electrification can in the future change the user experience and the capabilities of electrical vehicles for for the users and for the industry so I will not belong I will try to keep it short and to leave a space for question and answers so let's see how how long I will be able to I will need to pass the message so I start a little bit from from far away so software defined systems what does it mean and and then as introduction to the software defined vehicle so software defined vehicle can simply mean that you have the possibility to define your car using software but in reality a system that is software design is a system where the abstraction and the control of the functionality is done in software so this is a very basic simple definition that means let's assume you have a puzzle here that is a square puzzle if it is hardware it stays like this until end of life so you can change this picture while if it's software defined you have the possibility during the lifetime of the square of this object to adjust it and to make becoming different animals so we have here for example a kangaroo we have other other shapes and this is what you can do in the field so afterwards after the system has been bought has been designed and then why software defined vehicle is introduced and because this is very important to understand the implications on software defined vehicle because the two things might look a little bit disconnected but it is not so software defined vehicle is a new mega trend because this enables for the car a second life so basically you buy an object at the beginning like a mobile phone and at the end of the life it looks different from how it was when you bought it and this is one of the most important aspect of software defined vehicle in that way it increase your user experience it inanes your user experience so you have also the possibility to enjoy different features over the lifetime and last but not least but this is more than for the producers of car than for the user it enables recurring profit and enabling the curing profit is not trivial because the business model of the industry is changing completely so also in the past who were selling mobile phone were making revenue on hardware selling nowadays is not like this is more software than hardware and this is happening also for the car makers so some German OEMs last year had one billion on revenue only on software updates one billion on revenue and this is going to increase in the last 10 years to become double-digit revenues for the OEMs so but what does it mean then in terms of electrification functionality the possibility to update the vehicle and to update the user interface of the vehicle so in this picture I'm trying to represent what could be updated over lifetime of the car so on the upper part you have more capabilities that are related to the user experience that means you can buy more horsepower to have more performances or you can subscribe to new membership in the infotainment world and this is I think clear to everybody on the bottom part of this light I represent something that is a little bit transparent for the user but still important but it is even more important for the car producers so the industry can benefit from firmware update over the air because you can in a safety and security when the car is in the field so what is this norm here the R155 that is very popular nowadays in the automotive it does not only prescribe that you need to fix security threat but first of all it forces the OEM to block security threat so even if you don't have a fix for example for a Bluetooth connection the first thing you need to do is to disable the Bluetooth to prevent that somebody is attacking the vehicle how can you do this without firmware update over the air without the capabilities to remotely control the functionality it's not possible and this is one example but the other example that is relevant for electrification is this one data analysis and maintenance so the car being connected to the cloud has the possibility to learn day by day from the use case from the user scenario of the users itself and in this context this is also another way to represent the famous digital twin concept so we have on the bottom part the real world reality you have the physical car that is around and on the upper part of this slide you have the metaverse where there is a replica of your car in the cloud and the idea here is that data from the car are connected are compressed are pre-analysed if needed are sent to the cloud in the cloud there is a learning algorithm that is understanding if the users drives more in the city or more on the highway if it's leaving in a warm place or in a cold place if he likes to have a sport drive style or more an economical drive style and depending on this can tune the drive train the battery management system in order to offer to the user better drive experience or a longer drive experience depending on the specific user scenario once this is done the updated tuning of the car can be redeployed in the field and goes then in the real car in the real vehicle so in this concept electrification is just at the beginning because this is still simply started now and the software defined vehicle does not simply mean that you can update the software of the car but means also this means that you can calibrate that you can fine tune the functionality of the car in the field day by day so that is to introduce electrification in terms of opportunities because I mean this is meanwhile also by law expected to happen will happen and what are the opportunities decarbonization is in first place so the objective final objective is to be able to reduce the emission and to have a cleaner environment but alone this is not only what we want really to achieve that is also other opportunities like for example more fun to drive because the kind of driving experience that you have when driving an electrical motor is not the same like a combustion engine and in some cases we can also combine because we can have an hybrid car where you have both benefits the benefits of an electric vehicle and the benefits of a combustion engine benefit car last but not least electrification enables also new opportunities to recycle materials because we always think that the batteries of a car are somehow not so environment friendly equipment but in reality it depends on how the battery in the car will be reused at the end of life of the car so when they are a little bit worn out it's still possible to reuse them in other infrastructure for example in the grid infrastructure all this is what is possible with the transition to electrification but together because as usual there are never only pros there are also some cons in every heavy transformation range anxiety so whoever has an electric car or an hybrid car knows very well how it is after the three or four hundred kilometers when the indicators start to say that there is only 10 percent of the range capabilities left and then you need to find a way to recharge your car or to feel again the tank that is usually smaller charging time because when you have an hybrid car and you simply can feel the tank in the last few minutes when you have a full electric vehicle and you need to wait multiple minutes or even hours to recharge your battery this is of course not extremely convenient for the users for us as drivers and last but not least is a matter of maturity of the technology so we said we have done a lot until today but much more has to be done and if there is not the possibility to upgrade the functionality of the system so that it stays state of the art also after the car is bought it is a little bit limiting the capabilities and the functionalities of the electrical system and in this context how ST wants to help the industry and support the innovation so with the full family of products you see on the left side of this slide the typical three-level representation of a car vehicle so we start on the top from the cloud services what I mentioned the digital twin then we go in the middle where there is more the control part that the software defined part there is the intelligence the vehicle computer and then there are the zones to represent fireballing a sort of gateway between the software functionality and the harness and then below there are the actuations with the harness we play as ST a role everywhere so from the actuation stellar e where he stays for electrification going up to vehicle computers to zone control with stellar g and stellar p stellar g and p are called integration mcs because they in allows also the capabilities to integrate more functionalities together and in particular stellar p is designed for motion control so focus for electrification are stellar p as integration motion control and stellar e as actuation with advanced analog capabilities only as a brief explanation about stellar stellar is a brand of ST that covers all the automotive 32-bit digital products so from very low-end going up to be a success everything is called stellar and then depends on the different series to understand where these products are positioned so now something that it's very very schematic high level I mean does not represent something that is applicable everywhere but it's a simple representation of how it could look like the electrical drive train and power distribution in a vehicle so on the far left side you see the grid this is not automotive this is the infrastructure and in this case we have the alternate current domain but could be also in terms of charging could be also a DC charging so as I said it's only representation does not want to be an exhaustive picture and then when there is the first dotted line we go inside the vehicle so the onboard charger is onboard is an automotive system and what it does it generates the DC current to charge the battery pack that is in the middle battery pack that can be nowadays 400 800 volts and that is strictly connected to a battery management system that is an extremely important electronic control for safety of the car itself not only for the control of the battery and then to the battery pack that is high voltage there is the high voltage power distribution connected first of all traction inverter that gives the power the horsepower to the vehicle and potentially also a gear shift if for example it's an electric vehicle with the secondary dc dc we are transforming this high voltage to low voltage and then we go to the other consumers in the vehicles that can be body actuators can be infotainment can be chassis actuators so um very high level where we as st are offering a solution with the stellar p and stellar e products mainly in the onboard charger dc dc battery management system traction inverter and shift gear uh what is the best product to fit for a simple application actuations stellar e is exactly designed for this if you want to integrate more functionality in the same system you may need more horsepower and then you may go up to the stellar pms you or you can combine the two things so you could have stellar e combined with the stellar p but when we are talking about the single issues if you have something that is also trendy nowadays at oems combination of multiple issues then for combos you could have for example onboard charger secondary dc dc battery management system traction inverter traction inverter and gear shift in that case most probably you will need a stellar p integration mcu and you might have for attuation also they need to have a stellar e that described in that way are a little bit too abstract so let's try to explain a little bit better why these products fits the application and we start with the stellar e for electrification so it's a safe and secure digital signal controller for fast control loop today you have on the market a lot of fast control loop controller which are not automotive grade or are automotive grade but qualified after life and that don't offer a zeal safety level don't offer automotive security don't offer auto star support don't offer the hardware support for firmware update and firmware update over the air support is the basis for software in vehicles so if you don't have this you cannot do when the car is driving these things that I explained at the beginning so with stellar e we have mathematical accelerators and a sub nanosecond pwm to implement fast control loop with very fast analog to digital converter with very low latency comparators and we have as well the mathematical accelerator for cordy for example or hardware resolver but at the same time we have thanks to the cortex m7 that is the core of this the heart of this system offer also the standard control capabilities like a normal mcu so basically you can combine in a single chip both the fast control loop part and the typical housekeeping and control algorithm part of the system and everything born since the beginning at design level to be automotive grade meaning with all the ecc protection end to end ecc and so on so up to the highest grade of safety while what is the stellar p mcu because we mentioned both stellar p then enters into the game when the performances needed are higher in that case we have cortex r 52 plus cores and when there is the need to integrate multi-asil virtual machines so that means we have the possibility to virtualize in real time different virtual machines thanks to multiple techniques starting from the core the core itself the r 52 supports natively virtualization but also with the design of the platform itself that has been done to allow those count of advanced features but there is also much more so we have high-end accelerators to do the actuation for example the latest version of the gtm with a resolution timers we have mathematical accelerators fast that this is and in particular in this family but also in the stellary family we have the advanced ota support x2 last year i did a speech on the over the capabilities of this family so i hope should be still retrievable in the internet otherwise on youtube for sure there is an explanation about how it works this innovative technique for for firmware update over the air so only one example because i don't want to bore people here uh is planning how every topology could look like but in that case i am simply um representing on the upper part of this like a standard approach about how to do a dcdc converter and obc so you have a control mcu and the mcu usually has safety security supports autosar because this is connected to the rest of the vehicle network and then you have one or more dsp's that are doing the control loop that don't have very reduced safety that have no security that do not support autosar do not support firmware update over the air so you have at least two if not four components to do this kind of control algorithm when you move to stellary on the bottom you can combine all those things in one single product and that the possibility to do control and actuation is easy with security with firmware update over the air and we support for autosar everything we want to chain everything born since the beginning automotive great and we are offering hardware because st is a nor i think a well-known supplier of semiconductor components but this has to be complemented also with software and in our case here we are demonstrating at our boost if you are interested please pass by 4a 148 is our boost we have world with a partner that is a startup called oxydos very clever guys that are using rust new trendy programming language which is by default type safe memory safe thread safe and so on and they develop an operating system which is called oxydos and that is able to work like a small type two hypervisor so basically it runs on the hardware and it offers some sandboxed task where you can run a c application because if you have legacy c code you may want to use it but you can also run the applications natively written in rust and using then all the benefits of this new language programming language so in that way basically you start having a compile time a good coverage of the ISO standards plus you have c like execution speed and you have also object oriented like programmers model so it is a quick start a quick way to start in the design of a secure and safe issues using safe and secure hardware and safe and secure operating system this is only of course one example our ecosystem is much broader but this is what we are showing here and then I come to the end so that there are also some minutes for Q&A if any what are the takeaways of this introduction today so electrification is something of one of the most important mega trending automotive together with software defined vehicle the two software defined vehicle and electrification are not necessarily decoupled as it could be as it could look like at the beginning there are a lot of challenges that have to be solved in the transition to electric vehicles including the to bring the technology to to become much more efficient and then simplification of the architecture and achieve the highest power efficiency that can be achievable in this kind of transition the digital twins and the software defined vehicle functionalities can help car makers and the tier one producers to achieve these kind of goals not only at the beginning when the car is produced but also a lifetime of the vehicle and then last but not least a steam micro electronics that is providing the components we don't provide the complete solution is bringing the technology and innovation that is simplifying the solution of these challenges and so we have spoken about stellary mcu for actuation electrification as the lrp mcu integration mcu for motion control that is basically everything i wanted to tell you today so if you want to know more about our technology please buzz by our whole about a booth in a whole for a stand 148 and now i think i can close the presentation and i can leave the stage to you in case there are questions if any microphone in the middle so that the people that are not on site can also hear your question would be appreciated regarding you know the recent announcement from tesla that in the next generation of their product all the mcu's will be designed in-house so just wondering what is your view on this thanks well i cannot comment on the specific announcement but you may know that this is becoming pretty pretty much popular nowadays that oems are going directly to the tier two to design together the semiconductor products when they say that they will design by their own you should not imagine that they will simply produce the semiconductor themselves so they will be involved and will work in the design of some specific products together with tier two this is what we are seeing as well we are partnering with many oems specifically this one i don't think but i don't know simply i cannot comment but with others yes there are also press releases around so it's a trend that is happening and we will see how far they will go so because at a certain point you also need to benefit from the economy or scale so if you design the products only for your own it's difficult to it's difficult to benefit from the big volumes so there must be at a certain point a compromise and then oems might design the chips that are making them differentiate from their competitors any other question we still have six minutes hello okay so we understood that this the the importance of the software is increasing right so from st point of view is going to be an increased offering from software perspective or because it's becoming more a trend that you know even from semiconductor point of view the offering from software is going up so what is the positioning of testing in this from the stellar family is going to be this still much position and on the other offering we understood there is already a software offering in the picture but yeah if you can comment on this thanks thank you a very good question i mean this is something that i don't think there is the right answer what we think we need to do is to invest more in software but this does not mean that we need to design the software by our own so mainstream what is it tends to do is to work more with partners and to enable and to broaden and enable more ecosystem partners than before but still software is defining the functionality and remains then the key competence of our customers so if we provide software to the market then this become same for everybody means become no longer a differentiator for our customers so we tend to invest more on what is not differentiating low level drivers safety support some security support all the basic functionalities but we believe that at a certain point differentiating software like also the algorithm for traction control or for conversion this has to be left to the customers to the oem themselves so that can differentiate so it's true that we also invest more in software than before but still we invest only on what is not differentiated for our customers otherwise we try to simply broaden and sustain and enable the ecosystem like with oxytocs i have a question regarding the definition but your product family including for this stellar pge so what is the criteria for you to define this difference is because of the performance or you will do some system level testing or validation for different product families which can support the customers is a question so if i understand the question you say what is differentiated the different families bg and d it's the design the configuration of the ship so the backbone the technology in many cases the same in some cases we share even the architecture but then the peripheral mix and the specific features of the different components enabled for different applications better than others at the end they are all microcontrollers somehow general purpose but in a stellar e you have picosecond pwm you do not need in body and in body you may need more memory for protocol handling than what you need in electrification so those are examples or you may need the sigma delta dc but you don't need the sigma delta dc in a lighting control so the peripheral mix and the configuration of the products are making them suitable for a certain application more than another application another follow question as well does mean that you will also do this product qualification according to different application as well in automotive by example your your stellar e i forgot exactly the brand is used for bms used for dc dc so you will make your product qualification also done in the system level for the bms usually we don't do system level qualification but we do qualification that is tailored to the application so for example if you are doing combustion engine control you need the different grade of environmental condition than if you are doing lighting control this is what we do we qualify differently the different products depending on the target application but we usually don't qualify in system this is responsibility of our customers okay thank you you're welcome so i'm very happy because i received three questions this is not normal i mean or at least in the last sessions i have not seen so many questions that means the topic was interesting i mean thank you very much for your time for the participation as i said we are all the three days at our booth so please come and visit us we have also very good coffee so thank you very much enjoy the show have a nice day bye thank you francesco and in a few minutes we have an expert panel coming up so we continue