Denso Corporation has announced that it is, along with Imagination Technologies, headquartered in Hertfordshire, UK, undertaking joint research on hardware multithreading that enables a processor (CPU) to execute multiple processes concurrently. This technology is claimed to provide an advantage for next-generation in-vehicle electronic systems.

With recent developments in advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and automated driving technologies, various in-vehicle components and functions have been computerised to ensure integrated control, and many computers (electronic control units or ECUs) have been built into vehicles. In general, LSIs (large-scale integrated circuits, which are a type of semiconductor device) incorporate two or more CPUs, and so the required performance of CPUs has become increasingly complex.

Imagination develops and licenses intellectual property for semiconductor system-on-a-chipdevices (SoC IP cores), and has world-class multithreading technologies that are integrated into its MIPS CPUs. Denso says it has decided to launch a joint research programme with Imagination in order to implement multithreading more efficiently for interconnections between ECUs in particular.

The Japanese major has been developing technologies and products to help create a society free from traffic accidents. Based on these technologies,