Spansion's dual-core processors will become your car's brains

Spansion is launching a family of ARM-based chips that will serve as the brains of smarter cars.

The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based chip maker is unveiling its Spansion Traveo microcontrollers today for automotive applications. The dual-core chips are based on the ARM Cortex-R5 core and will deliver high performance for human-machine interfaces, security, and networking protocols for cars.

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The chips are for electric vehicles, body electronics, battery management, air conditioning and heating systems, and automotive displays. The applications could improve driver safety and make it easier for users to deal with advanced technology in cars.

“The Spansion Traveo family strengthens our position as a leading provider of microcontroller products for automotive and industrial applications,” said Takeshi Fuse, the senior vice president and general manager of Spansion’s Automotive MCU Business Unit, in a statement. “The family of MCUs will offer application-tailored system solutions to ease both hardware and software design and integration, delivering advanced security and performance.”

The new chips show that advanced chip technology is making it into cars as the newest vehicles are outfitted for better power consumption, internet connectivity, and more precise automated controls. The MB9D560 chip from Spansion has dual-core ARM processors with 2MBs of embedded Flash memory. It operates at 200 megahertz. Each core can run independently, and the chip has features suitable for general computing such as error detection and correction.

Chip makers like Spansion, Nvidia, Intel, and Broadcom are aiming to modernize cars with technology that you won’t notice, like better functioning brakes, as well as those that you will, like self-driving cars.