| ??? 11/10/09 16:37 Read: times |
#170645 - for automotive applications, for example Responding to: ???'s previous message |
Kai Klaas said:
... the future will go to "multi-microcontrolling", where a set of individual microcontrollers are used to solve a complex problem. Not only to increase speed and power, but also to increase redundancy and to make the system more immune to failures. Think of the multi-microcontroller arrays used in some today's utility vehicles or the 5 on-board computers of the space shuttle. The space shuttle had more computers than that! It had two for each of its three main-engines, for example. Then, additional features are of importance, like flexibility, communication features and power consumption.
Kai Klaas Redundancy is a feature the European car makers are exploring with great interest in the context of multiple small controllers rather than one "BIG" processor control systems. The challenge is to devise a network in which no single-point failure can disable a critical system, e.g. air-bag, brakes, lighting, etc. yet, in the absence of a "GOD" processor, which could, itself, fail, detect the failure and arbitrate the control of that system to a functional member of the network. What's kept the 805x as popular as it is over several decades is the instruction set. The ARM core was designed as a general-purpose core rather than one tailored for control applications. It is, of course, adequate to most tasks that an 805x can satisfy, but some contol tasks are just too demanding, and it takes a very big, very fast ARM core MCU to do what a relatively small (and inexpensive) 805x can easily do more quickly because of its instruction set/hardware configuration. FOrtunately, the ARM is still developing. RE |
