Artega GT Sports Car Dashboard Uses Fujitsu Graphics Controller

March 10, 2008 // Published as a news service by IHS

Based on Fujitsu proprietary 90 nanometer (nm) complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) process technology, Jade is optimised for applications requiring central processing unit (CPU) performance combined with 2D/3D graphics features, FME said.

Target applications include on-board and mobile navigation systems, graphical dashboard systems, head-up display (HUD) units, rear seat entertainment, point-of-sale terminals and industrial control panels.

In the Artega GT, the instrument panel consists of a high-resolution, illuminated 10.2 inch colour display with 800 by 480 pixels and a digitally controlled dual-pointer analogue instrument with a metal clock face. This displays engine speed and road speed on one axis.

According to FME, a trend is developing in the automotive industry to move away from the traditional mechanical pointers and gauges in favour of graphical representations shown on LCDs. However, some drivers still prefer the look of the traditional gauges, FME said.

In the Artega GT, the instrument panel has one large central mechanical gauge with all the other instruments rendered graphically by Jade and projected onto the LCD. According to FME, this requires a controller able to produce 3D graphics - including the shading around the instruments - to make them look like a mechanical gauge.

This is a typical application for Jade, FME said. As a system on chip (SoC), Jade contains the ARM 9 CPU, a synthesizable processor with a Jazelle technology (Java acceleration) enhanced 32 b reduced instruction set computer (RISC) CPU, 16 kB instruction cache, 16 kB data cache and a memory management unit (MMU).

This makes Jade a single-chip graphical subsystem, which can be controlled externally by sending it information. FME said this single-chip unit can calculate all the necessary information, produce the graphics and feed the display. Jade was the first device in a new family of graphics controllers aimed at embedded automotive graphics applications and the first Fujitsu SoC to integrate the 32 b ARM926EJ-S CPU core with the company's graphics processor Coral PA.

The Coral PA processor provides features for embedded graphics applications, such as in-car infotainment systems. These features include a rendering engine for 2D/3D graphic acceleration functions, a geometry processor supporting floating point transformations for graphics animation and a dual-display capability (2 x red, green, blue (RGB) digital output) that enables independent contents to be shown on two connected screens.

Packaged in a 484 pin ball grid array (BGA), the device requires a supply voltage of 3.3 volts (V) (input/output (I/O)), 1.8 V (double data rate 2 (DDR2)), 1.2 V (internal) and is designed to operate over a temperature range of -40 degrees Celsius to +85 degrees Celsius.

Other features include:

• A texture mapping unit (up to 4096 x 4096).
• Bit-boundary block transfer (Blt) unit (up to 4096 x 4096).
• Alpha bit-Blt and binary raster operation (ROP2) functions.
• Six layers of overlay display (Windows).
• Alpha plane and constant alpha value for each layer.
• Dual digital video input.
• Video scaler (up/down scaling).
• Brightness, contrast, and saturation control for video.

Source: Fujitsu.