Freescale has chip for cheaper head-up displays
1 min read
A triple core, single chip MCU – designed to drive down the cost of high end automotive instrument clusters – has been introduced by Freescale.
The ARM Cortex-based MAC57D5xx MCU family supports complex graphics, including head-up displays, and eliminates the need for costly additional processors and memory chips.
Freescale says the device offers 1.7x the performance of competing MCUs. In addition, the triple core MAC57D5xx helps enhance safety by separating key instrument cluster hardware and software via concurrent operation of separate operating systems on each of the device's three cores.
Independent operation of an AutoSAR OS on the ARM Cortex-M4 core, and a graphics OS on the ARM Cortex-A5 core, allows for enhanced safety.
Ray Cornyn, vp of product management and global marketing for Freescale's Automotive MCU business, said: "With automotive system integration at an all-time high, OEMs and their suppliers are focused on consolidating large amounts of driver information and increasing the quality of graphics in dashboards, while keeping safety and security as the first concern.
"Our next generation instrument cluster microcontrollers deliver a secure, single chip solution that processes masses of vehicle information while delivering high resolution graphics and scaling to meet future demands."
