Infineon guns for Freescale in automotive engine control

Infineon Technologies is looking to take on Freescale Semiconductor's PowerPC chip in the engine management market in a move that is set to spark a price war.

Infineon is looking for ways to make its TriCore embedded microcontroller even more cost effective as it continues to back the architecture, says Peter Bauer, head of the Automotive, Industrial and Multimedia (AIM) group and a member of Infineon's board of directors. AIM is the larger of the two groups in the company, bringing in 70% of the revenue.

"We will discover how low in cost we can get the TriCore," he said, sparking a potential price war."We believe we can bring TriCore to the lowest cost engine management designs."

This is set to spark a price war if Freescale competes in price to keep its market share, but will bring sophisticated engine management technology to a wider range of vehicles in lower price brackets.

Bauer claims Infineon has 60% of engine management designs using TriCore. Infineon is currently the #2 automotive chip supplier in the world with a market share of 9.5%, behind Freescale's 11.2% (see global market right).