Micron Technology’s director of embedded segment solutions, William Stafford, explains why choosing the right memory is critical for quality, safety, reliability and performance.
Everyone understands supply- line shortages and their impact on business. Arguably one of the biggest disruptions is a product recall. Unfortunately, recalls are a common occurrence in the automotive industry, affecting millions of cars and consumers every year.
Recalls are not only a matter of safety but also of cost to manufacturers. Recalls can also damage a manufacturer’s reputation and brand image, leading to lower sales, decreased customer loyalty and lost market share. To date, many recalls have either been mechanical or electrical. However, with increased electronic components in safety-related systems, like advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and autonomous driving electronics, the risk of electronics failure is elevated.
Many new features—including blind spot monitoring, forward collision warning, pedestrian detection, lane assist, emergency braking and parking assist—require analysis of sensor/vision data to compute recommended actions. In autonomous systems, analysis requires local information and connected data which increases data input complexity and intensifies the need for higher compute bandwidth. This could require execution of millions of lines of code/software. This means vehicles need a lot of memory (normally low-power dynamic random-access memory or LPDRAM) to run code fast and plenty of storage for code and data (eg non- volatile or flash memory).
In many consumer and compute products, memory and storage devices are often considered a commodity because the cheapest device is often good enough. However, in the automotive market, device selection is a different type of decision. Using the cheapest product in an automobile could later impact customers and manufacturers. Today’s memory and storage devices are complex with compute power in the device. This fact, linked with the requirements of automotive makes component choice important and key to having engineering and quality groups involved in the device selection process to reduce risk of failures. Developing a solid comparison of the products (Fig 1) can help evaluate failure risk, system compatibility, safety compliance and warranty requirements for a given vehicle.
Those selecting parts for vehicle applications should look for automotive-grade parts, meaning designed and ruggedized to meet the extreme demands of automotive environments such as extreme temperatures, high quality/reliability and meeting the safety standards essential for the application, while still meeting the performance, density and low power required for the design.
Automotive recalls are costly for manufacturers. These costs can be mitigated or reduced through automotive-grade products, resulting in improved reputation and brand image. Selection of the right memory and storage products can help save companies from potentially large losses and an impacted quality reputation. Companies like Micron, who have been supplying innovative automotive products for over 30 years, want to collaborate with automotive manufacturers and those in the ecosystem helping make these critical selections.
