Macronix proactive partner of Renesas R-Car Consortium

Renesas’ R-Car Consortium has 255 members, only 70 companies were selected as a Proactive Partner in 2020. Macronix contributes its considerableFlash memory expertise and collaborates with fellow members to advance third- and fourth-generation R-Car designs. Members preferentially receive Renesas R-Car system-on-a-chip (SOC) development boards and end-to-end development support. Their core focus is to leverage R-Car solutions for fast system booting, ADAS, in-vehicle infotainment, and gateways in vehicles.

Multiple devices within Macronix’s NOR and NAND Flash memory portfolio - such as the company’s OctaBus Memory, LybraFlash and e.MMC NOR Flash solutions - have been designed into automotive instrument clusters on both Renesas’ R-Car and RH850 platforms. This development has the potential for future Renesas R-Car solutions to employ octaflash to benefit over-the-air (OTA) update applications in ADAS applications .

The R-Car Consortium provides a collaborative partnership platform for members, linking integrators, developers and software vendors who share their expertise and work toward optimally blended solutions for next-generation ADAS and Connected Car applications.

“ADAS designs present unique design challenges, not the least of them secure, reliable memory to store critical, safety-ensuring data,” said Anthony Le, Macronix America Vice President of Marketing. “The R-Car Consortium provides an essential platform for market leaders, such as Macronix and other key contributors to the automotive-electronics ecosystem who share our expertise, collaboarate and ultimately blend our respective technologies into compelling end-product automotive solutions.”

Based on Macronix’s patented OctaBus platform, octaflash memory expands Flash throughput to improve efficiency and shorten system boot time, which is ideal for external image memory and storage. LybraFlash delivers a user experience comparable to NOR flash and implements an embedded error code correction (ECC) engine to deliver high-integrity data, enabling ADAS designs to use microprocessors that lack ECC support or necessary computing power. Macronix e.MMC stores images and large programs and helps ADAS designers increase system capability with larger memory capacity.

Fueled by a compounded annual growth rate of 19%, the global ADAS market is expected to exceed $67bn by 2025. That growth is attributed to increasing government initiatives that mandate driver assistance system focus on lower road accidents and to the expanding adoption of ADAS in mid-tier cars.