Fujitsu Announces World’s First High-End Controller with APIX2 Interface for Automotive Applications

MB86R12 ‘Emerald-P’ will be produced to automotive quality grade (AEC-Q100) and is a powerful device that combines the ARM Cortex-A9 processor core, the programmable shader GPU (Graphics Processor Unit), the Fujitsu Image Processor and the APIX®2 interface - Inova Semiconductor’s latest technology.



The MB86R12 ‘Emerald-P’ has four video inputs that can run in parallel, and hence supports various camera-based automotive applications. The newly developed technology from Fujitsu enables a viewpoint-dependent, 360º Wrap-Around-View system by mapping the frames of the four video cameras onto a 3D mesh. Such a camera-based application increases driver awareness and automotive safety, assisting with blind spots and multiple views of the car’s immediate environment.



This successor chip to the other member of the ‘Emerald’ family (MB86R11 ‘Emerald-L’) is available as engineering samples in Q3 2011, with higher performance and operating frequency (530MHz vs 400MHz), increased operating temperature range for the automotive industry, and additional automotive features including the APIX® interface. The processor core is the high performance ARM Cortex A9, which also has an integrated ARM-Neon-SIMD engine.



MB86R12 ‘Emerald-P’ supports up to 1Gbyte of DDR2-800 and DDR3-1066 SDRAM (organised either x16 or x32) and NAND, NOR and managed NAND (mNAND) flash memory. The 2D graphic engine, which supports fast rotation, blending, scaling and copy operations, is designed for rendering cover flows, text and needles. In parallel, the Fujitsu 3D graphics core supports OpenGL ES 2.0 shading language-based operations on the freely programmable vertex- and fragment- shaders. The configurable architecture ensures optimised performance of the 3D core, by automatically delivering 2D operations for processing, in parallel, by the 2D engine.



The MB86R12 ‘Emerald-P’ provides three independent display controllers, which are capable of driving displays of widely differing resolutions. Consequently, one ‘Emerald’ device can feasibly provide all the display requirements of a modern dashboard. Huge data through-put is required to support multiple, high refresh rates on high resolution displays and these are also supported by ‘Emerald’s’ internal architecture.



A further benefit is the availability of the multi-layer concept, as up to 8 graphical ‘layers’ are available for each display controller. This allows very flexible and prioritised graphic rendering of the data presented to the user when changing from one operational scene to another. The automotive standard resources and communications protocols CAN, MediaLB (Media Local Bus®) and Ethernet are also implemented in hardware, integrated into the ‘Emerald’ family.



The APIX® is a standard high-speed link for video and control in various automotive applications, while the GPU supports OpenGL ES 2.0 and can run 2D- and 3D operations in parallel. Video-stream inputs can be pre-processed with the internal image processor, which enhances the visibility of details in over- and under-exposed video frames by intelligent contrast and brightness control.



Traditionally, the analogue pointers in classical dashboard configurations were limited, providing little more than speed and rpm indication, but hybrid dashboards of today have classical needle instruments in conjunction with perhaps one or two medium-sized colour displays. By contrast, the trend in the automotive industry now is for modern instrumentation and driver information systems to depend completely on digital displays, and use their unlimited flexibility to show all kinds of information; some of which have never been available to the drivers and passengers before.



Ultimately the flexibility of such systems increases even more when completely virtual and the CID (Central Information Display), which is today mainly used for navigation and multimedia functions, is fully merged with the dashboard.



From the system perspective, real flexibility here means that the same device can be used for multiple purposes and this has a strong influence on the semiconductor industry suppliers, who must now deliver the ‘right-sized’ feature sets, performance and interfaces in their products.



In cars of the future, the virtual display is the primary interface with the driver, replacing traditional instruments such as pointers, knobs and buttons and maybe even the view of the road ahead! It brings entirely new applications into the car, not only increasing comfort but also safety, as is the case with camera-based driver assistance systems such as night vision assistance and head up display applications.



From the software viewpoint, the CGI Studio is Fujitsu’s software development platform for hybrid 2D and 3D graphical interfaces (HMI/GUI) for Automotive Instrument Clusters and Infotainment Systems and is compatible with the ‘Emerald-P’. Besides the ‘Candera’ 2D and 3D engines, the CGI Studio provides a complete tool chain for the development of hybrid 2D and 3D graphical interfaces.



A Software BSP (Board Support Package) will be available for Linux, and Driver software for further embedded Operating Systems is currently under development.