By going RISC-V, suppliers of automotive MCUs based on proprietary processor cores hope to avoid getting designed out by OEMs and excluded from the huge Chinese market.
yolegroup.com, Apr. 02, 2025 –
With billions already sunk into its proprietary TriCore MCUs, Infineon’s RISC-V shift reflects a huge change in the company’s strategy.
Companies such as STMicroelectronics, Renesas and NXP Semiconductors all say they are already using RISC-V cores. But those RISC-V cores are deeply buried in their architecture for specific embedded applications, not the kind that’s an open-source instruction architecture exposed to application developers.
Both NXP and STMicroelectronics have invested in Quintauris, a joint venture that includes Robert Bosch GmbH, Infineon, Nordic Semiconductor ASA, and Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. STMicroelectronics joined Quintauris, because “the RISC-V ISA has interesting features that have value in specific use cases.” But calling Arm cores and ecosystem as “STMicroelectronics’ choice for General Purpose (STM32) and automotive MCU roadmaps,” STMicroelectronics keeps mum on its plans to diversify its ISA options.
Renesas continues to develop, for automotive, MCUs with the company’s proprietary RH850 core, as well as MCUs and SoCs based on Arm cores. The company is still “evaluating automotive RISC-V cores and preparing our roadmap for RISC-V intersection as demand emerges.”
Infineon is preeminent in the real-time, secure and dependable MCU market. So, why risk a brand-new family of automotive RISC-V MCUs?
Thomas Schneid, Infineon’s senior director for SW & Ecosystem Development in Infineon’s Automotive Microcontroller Business Unit, acknowledged Infineon’s success and growth in the high-grade automotive market.
“But there is this big BUT,” he noted. “We are seeing that the automotive market is demanding more and more ‘something on top’ in the way of how we were successfully serving this market (with dependable MCU products).”
Schneid wakes up at night as he can’t stop thinking about OEMs who want “much more openness, flexibility and ‘pick-and-choose’ capability.”
“We understood they want to have their own way of orchestrating their software supply chain”, Schneid explained.
The problem is that such customers’ demands are “inverse” to what Infineon offers today with its TriCore MCU based on proprietary architecture, Schneider acknowledged. TriCore relies on a black box setup that ensures dependability and security for Infineon’s automotive MCUs.