Multi-core MCU adds secure enclave for protected high-performance AI applications
Enabling more power-efficient AI inference, the Infineon PSOC™ Edge E84 features a sophisticated compute architecture with high-performance and low-power blocks, backed by dedicated AI acceleration hardware, fast memory, and advanced embedded security features.
The PSOC Edge E84 MCU further expands the broad PSOC microcontroller portfolio. It is intended to enable intelligent, low-power edge products to process artificial intelligence (AI) workloads locally while supporting secure, responsive control. The MCU features hardware-assisted machine learning (ML) acceleration for next-generation compute-and-control applications. The PSOC Edge E84 combines a high-performance Arm® Cortex®-M55 with Helium digital signal processing (DSP) and Arm Ethos™-U55 neural processing unit (NPU) acceleration for demanding AI workloads, alongside a low-power Cortex-M33 with Infineon NNLite for always-on ML use cases. The architecture is supported by up to 6.5MB of total SRAM and 512KB of non-volatile RRAM.
To support connected products designed around Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) security expectations, the PSOC Edge E84 includes a hardware-backed security architecture for protecting device identity, firmware integrity, cryptographic operations, and field lifecycle management. The MCU integrates a Lockstep Secure Enclave in the low-power always-on domain, allowing security-critical functions to remain anchored in a protected area of the device architecture. Depending on the selected part number, the MCU supports up to Infineon Edge Protect Category 4 and Arm Platform Security Architecture (PSA) Level 4 capabilities, including Secure Enclave runtime services for PSA-compliant cryptography, key management, secure storage, and attestation.
The security architecture also includes secure Infineon root-of-trust (RoT) key storage, secure boot, secure firmware update support, tamper detection, side-channel attack mitigation, and protection against fault injection attacks. Secure isolation is supported through Arm TrustZone, with the root-of-trust established at boot by the Cortex-M33 CPU. Additional lifecycle security features include secure debug, secure return material authorization (RMA) mode for field failure analysis, and Infineon proprietary protection units for memory and peripherals.
Software enablement is based on the ModusToolbox™ development software suite, including integration with the DEEPCRAFT™ AI Suite solution with off-the-shelf DEEPCRAFT™ ready models. ModusToolbox is a comprehensive collection of multi-platform tools and software libraries, including board support packages, a peripheral driver library, and middleware libraries.