Japanese-owned chip designer ARM has today unveiled a new chip designed with safety as its key feature.
Unlike
standard chipsets, the ARM Cortex-R52 is designed to comply with the most
stringent safety standards in the automotive and industrial markets.
Such
a chipset is necessary for a number of new emergent computing fields, including
self-driving cars and medical robots.
In
these fields, compromised code on the chip itself could result in very
dangerous consequences when in use.
To
mitigate this danger, within the Cortex-R52 chip safety-critical code is fully
isolated by ‘hardware-enforced separation’ of software tasks.
“The
Cortex-R52 is the first processor built on the ARMv8-R architecture and it was
designed from the ground up to address functional safety,” said James McNiven,
general manager for CPU at ARM.
While
the chips were designed by ARM, the company has already signed a deal with
STMicroelectronics for them to be the first licensed manufacturer of the
Cortex-R52.
STMicroelectronics
themselves noted the security provided by the chips as a key selling point.
“The
Cortex-R52’s ability to compartmentalize software provides our users with the
best solution for safety without loss of determinism,” said Fabio Marchiò,
automotive digital division general manager of STMicroelectronics.
The
announcement of this chip comes at a time of growth for autonomous vehicles and
other critical robotic systems.
With
recent hacking demonstrations showing the relative insecurity of the current
chips and software used in these systems, the new ARM chip could find a strong
market niche.
The
release of the Cortex-R52 also follows ARM’s recent acquisition by Japanese
electronics company Softbank.
One
of the main drivers of this deal was for Softbank to acquire the chip
technology which would underpin the explosion of so-called Internet of Things
(IoT) devices.
As
autonomous cars and industrial/medical robots are key parts of the IoT
ecosystem, this acquisition already appears to be bearing fruit for Softbank.
Further
demonstrating the interest in this sector, key rival Intel earlier this year
acquired Yogitech, another company which specialized in designing safety chips.
