Renesas developed a high-speed voltage sampling system that combines a variable delay circuit whose transmission time changes with the voltage difference and a time-to-digital converter that converts the time difference with respect to a reference clock to a digital value. This voltage sampling system can operate at the same 2 GHz as the fastest CPU clock.

Voltage droop prediction system

This system predicts the voltage droop four cycles in advance based on the voltage information acquired from the voltage sampling system. If this predicted voltage falls below a threshold value set in advance, it requests that the clock supply be stopped.

High-functionality clock control system

This system combines a clock gating circuit and a clock divider circuit and immediately stops the clock supply after receiving the clock stop request to suppress voltage droop. The clock supply recovers gradually by increasing the frequency from a frequency lower than the frequency prior to stopping the clock supply to minimize voltage droops which can be caused by restarting the clock supply.

By combining these three systems, voltage droops that might occur can be detected in advance and hardware faults that could occur due to those voltage droops can be prevented.

Based on the hardware fault detection and prediction technologies, Renesas has developed an SoC for automotive computing systems that is fabricated in a 16 nm FinFET process and that supports the ISO 26262 ASIL B standard for automotive functional safety. The SoC has a heterogeneous multi-core architecture with a total of nine CPUs of three types. It also includes a graphics processing unit (GPU) that provides massive processing power.

Renesas intends to provide automotive computing system development platforms to lead the autonomous-driving era using these technologies and contribute to the realization of safe, secure and environment-friendly vehicles.

Renesas announced this technology on February 1 at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) held in San Francisco from January 31 to February 4, 2016. The demonstration, which showcased a board mounted with an SoC that implemented these technologies, showed the utility of these results by demonstrating continuous graphics display using both CPU and GPU operations while operating both the runtime self-test systems and systems for predicting hardware faults due to voltage droops.

About Renesas Electronics Corporation

Renesas Electronics Corporation (TSE: 6723), the world’s number one supplier of microcontrollers, is a premier supplier of advanced semiconductor solutions including microcontrollers, SoC solutions and a broad-range of analog and power devices. Business operations began as Renesas Electronics in April 2010 through the integration of NEC Electronics Corporation (TSE:6723) and Renesas Technology Corp., with operations spanning research, development, design and manufacturing for a wide range of applications. Headquartered in Japan, Renesas Electronics has subsidiaries in 20 countries worldwide. More information can be found at www.renesas.com.

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