[Engineering Feature]
Portable Craze Redefines The Dashboard
Drivers and passengers take their information and entertainment centers on the road thanks to advanced automotive-infotainment systems.
TText, blog, or twitter hands-free while driving. Access your car’s iPod media player to change tracks and adjust the volume without lifting a finger. Even host a three-way telephone call via a Bluetooth device without your hands leaving the steering wheel. No longer content with standard features for low-end and mid-range cars, drivers expect satellite navigation, multizone climate control, satellite radio, and even beverage refrigeration as standard items.
We’re no doubt in the age of automotive infotainment (AI). Those old dashboards with manual AM/FM radios and CD players are disappearing, morphing into AI centers that include MP3 and DVD players, a GPS navigation system, hands-free mobilephone access, and wireless Internet browsing.
To lure customers who salivate over cutting-edge audio and video, car makers look to create entertainment centers on wheels. These systems are enabled by the latest microprocessors, memories, sensors, displays, microcontroller units (MCUs), graphics controllers, programmable logic devices (PLDs) like field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), and network interface controllers.
VOICE ACTIVATION A major trend among AI systems is voice activation, with many products and services recently arriving on the market. Dial2Do Inc. offers voice-activated calling with a single phone number. While drivers keep their hands on the wheel and their eyes on the road, they can access their e-mail, send text messages, use their phones, and accomplish other communications tasks.
Drivers can get their music on the go with another device from Innotech Systems that permits voice activation while the iPod is in the driver’s pocket. With the Accenda Voice Control, users merely plug in their existing earbuds or headphones. A cable connects the Accenda Voice Control to the iPod’s dock connector, so drivers can tell the media player what to do via voice commands.
The Sierra Wireless 595W, 880W, and 881W AirLink MP modems now have 802.11 b/g Wi-Fi hotspot and full routing capabilities to simplify installation and communication between a car and peripheral equipment. Users can access their mobile broadband coverage while outside their vehicle, enabling the sending of large image and video files.
The ATX Group, a telematics service provider, launched an initiative to wirelessly connect embedded and nomadic devices in vehicles to the Internet. Together with the Connected Vehicle Trade Association (CVTA), it’s trying to form an international working group to push this initiative.
BIG DEMAND FOR ICs The demand for AI semiconductor ICs like application-specific standard products (ASSPs) and PLDs is expected to drive their sales by 8.5% this year after last year’s 18.5% growth, according to iSuppli Corp. Two key driving forces, according to the market research firm, are the addition of extra intelligence to infotainment headsets and the push by OEMs to have tier-one electronicsystem suppliers lower their product costs.
“About 25% of the cost to an automobile manufacturer, particularly in high-end cars, is taken up by electronics,” says Tony Armstrong, product marketing manager for Linear Technology Corp., which supplies power ICs to the AI market. Some market pundits push that cost figure up to 40%. Obviously, it’s a good market for semiconductor IC manufacturers.
According to iSuppli, the two largest AI chip suppliers are STMicroelectronics and NXP Semiconductors, which grab 25% of the market share. However, Freescale Semiconductor and Infineon Technologies have the largest global share of the overall automotive electronics IC market. Combined global OEM and aftermarket revenue for AI systems is predicted to rise to $39.8 billion by the end of this year, up 7.9% from last year’s $36.98 billion, and up another $14 billion by 2014 (Fig. 1a).
At the same time, OEM AI system suppliers like Continental (formerly Siemens VDO), Blaupunkt, Delphi, and Visteon are coming under pressure from product makers to satisfy very competitive high-performance and low-cost system needs. These four companies, according to Strategy Analytics, occupy 57% of the OEM market (Fig. 1b).
The massive volume of data coming from AI systems requires automotive-grade storage media like hard-disk drives (HDDs). Toshiba Storage Systems Division’s HDDs, such as the 80-Gbyte MK8050GAC and the 60-Gbyte MK6050GAC, are the most widely used disk storage media in automotive systems. Designed to withstand rugged auto environments, they operate from –30°C to 85°C. Each device has low-profile dimensions of 69.85 by 100 by 9.5 mm.
OMNIPRESENT FPGAS Of all the ICs that can be found in today’s cars, FPGAs and complex PLDs (CPLDs) are the most common. Their reprogrammable flexibility allows electronic-system suppliers to keep pace with changing AI market demands. Also, they’re now replacing application-specific ICs (ASICs) and ASSPs.
Actel, Altera, Lattice Semiconductor, and Xilinx are some of the major players in this arena. They’ve been delivering automotive- grade FPGAs, CPLDs, and structured ASICs with the lowpower and wide-bandwidth features needed for AI systems.
Earlier this year, Altera introduced a number of MAX CPLDs, Cyclone FPGAs, and HardCopy structured ASICs designed with scalable hardware/software architectures. “Our approach mitigates the massive amount of redevelopment costs normally needed for keeping up with changing automotive electronics requirements,” says Dave Elliot, Altera’s automotive marketing manager.
OEMs can port their designs into a production-qualified FPGA or migrate to a low-cost, high-performance HardCopy structured ASIC. Available IP cores include Altera’s Nios II and ARM’s M1 Cortex embedded processors, as well as DSP and video and imaging IP suites. They support the latest automotive networking standards, such as CAN, MOST, LIN, and FlexRay.
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