Open Infotainment SoC Platform Allows Application-Specific Designs

July 22, 2002

The design of mobile "infotainment" systems has just gotten easier thanks to a collaboration by three companies on a common open system-on-a-chip (SoC) platform. Royal Philips Electronics, Eindhoven, the Netherlands, will combine its...

Roger Allan

The design of mobile "infotainment" systems has just gotten easier thanks to a collaboration by three companies on a common open system-on-a-chip (SoC) platform.

Royal Philips Electronics, Eindhoven, the Netherlands, will combine its systems and application knowhow as well as its CoReUse and MoReUse programs with the efficient integration of the PrimeXsys embedded RISC processor from ARM Ltd., Cambridge, England, and the open, Galaxic/Lunar DSP from Adelante Technologies, Paris. The system will be based on Philips' Nexperia mobile platform.

Unlike the mobile multimedia platforms from Texas Instruments and Intel, the new platform is open and the processor and DSP cores used are licensable. This lets engineers develop application-specific programmable platforms. Also, the new platform is operating-system independent.

A Philips spokesman points out that with this agreement, design environments are aligned, with Philips playing the integrator role for final products. The Nexperia platform's architecture allows designers to reuse hardware and software modules for easy upgrades and modifications.

According to Adelante, mobile infotainment applications are implemented by partitioning and mapping onto a multicore architecture. Depending on the application's complexity and constraints, the DSP subsystem is optimized by tuning the set of application-specific instructions, application-specific execution units, and/or application-specific coprocessors. This leads to a very high level of functional performance as well as cost-optimized and power-efficient consumer products.

Mobile automotive infotainment systems will be the initial application, enabling the design of building blocks for car radios, video, GPS navigation, Internet access, DVD players, and display screens. The companies hope to extend this new platform to wireless and mobile handheld applications.

For more information, visit www.arm.com, www.semiconductors.philips.com, and www.adelantetech.com.

About the Author

Roger Allan

Roger Allan is an electronics journalism veteran, and served as Electronic Design's Executive Editor for 15 of those years. He has covered just about every technology beat from semiconductors, components, packaging and power devices, to communications, test and measurement, automotive electronics, robotics, medical electronics, military electronics, robotics, and industrial electronics. His specialties include MEMS and nanoelectronics technologies. He is a contributor to the McGraw Hill Annual Encyclopedia of Science and Technology. He is also a Life Senior Member of the IEEE and holds a BSEE from New York University's School of Engineering and Science. Roger has worked for major electronics magazines besides Electronic Design, including the IEEE Spectrum, Electronics, EDN, Electronic Products, and the British New Scientist. He also has working experience in the electronics industry as a design engineer in filters, power supplies and control systems.

After his retirement from Electronic Design Magazine, He has been extensively contributing articles for Penton’s Electronic Design, Power Electronics Technology, Energy Efficiency and Technology (EE&T) and Microwaves RF Magazine, covering all of the aforementioned electronics segments as well as energy efficiency, harvesting and related technologies. He has also contributed articles to other electronics technology magazines worldwide.

He is a “jack of all trades and a master in leading-edge technologies” like MEMS, nanolectronics, autonomous vehicles, artificial intelligence, military electronics, biometrics, implantable medical devices, and energy harvesting and related technologies.