Automotive

Application examples

Fixed GPS navigation systems, portable navigation devices (PND), multifunction dashboards, car audio, car infotainment

The advantages of the DMP IP core

Industry standard specifications

The DMP IP core supports various industry standard graphical API specifications that have been established by the Khronos Group. It also complies with industry-standard SoC bus specifications such as OCP and AMBA.

MAESTRO-2G

MAESTRO technology is a 3D graphics extension function that DMP has developed independently, which uses hardware to implement various shader functions. This means that the kind of high quality graphical representations that could previously only be achieved on high end computers are now available for use in various car electronics products, and the procedures for doing so are straightforward.

Super low power consumption

DMP uses optimized graphics pipelines and dynamic clock gating to provide low power solutions that are suitable for car devices.

Smaller cores

SoCs for portable devices impose strict cost requirements. (SoC stands for ‘System on Chip’.) The DMP IP core is provided with the smallest gate size of its class available in the industry, which contributes to the development of lower cost SoCs.

Top class graphical processing performance

The DMP IP core does not just have excellent graphical processing performance, it boasts the industry’s highest level of processing performance per unit area of silicon. This delivers efficient graphical rendering at lower silicon cost.

Scalable architecture

The degree of parallelism for the graphics processing pipelines within the DMP IP core can be changed in a scalable manner. This allows the DMP IP core to flexibly support the performance requirements for a wide range of graphics systems, from low-end to high-end graphics systems.

Customization

There are various specifications required for graphics for portable devices. The DMP IP core can be customized flexibly in accordance with your demands, in terms of both software and hardware. IP core customization is supported by DMP’s industry-leading development and testing environment.

DMP IP core products

Fixed GPS navigation systems

PICA®200 is a graphical processing unit that features MAESTRO technology and SMAPH®-S, which supports programmable shaders. Embedding PICA200 in fixed GPS car navigation functions makes it possible to depict extremely realistic 3D maps that feel solid, allowing users to operate these 3D maps without any stress. Depicting the various textures of material surfaces, as demanded for realistic 3D representations, requires advanced rendering processing, such as bump mapping and pixel shading, whereby shadow calculations are performed pixel by pixel. DMP’s leading-edge shader rendering technology delivers such processing at high speed and super low power consumption, thereby opening up new horizons for 3D map depiction in GPS car navigation systems.

Portable navigation devices (PND)

SMAPH-F is a 2D vector graphics IP core that is compact and super energy efficient, while still boasting the best performance for its class available in the industry. By including SMAPH-F in portable navigation devices (PNDs), user interfaces with extremely high quality 2D graphics can be displayed, while simultaneously responding to the demand for lower costs. For example, SMAPH-F can be used to create menu screens that are well designed and easier to understand, or to render text in multiple languages with numerous fonts and arbitrary sizes with high-speed rendering of scalable fonts. Maps in 2D vector data format can be processed at high speed, including the processing for zooming in and out, and scrolling and rotating maps. This allows highly reliable 2D vector maps to be rendered in real time.

Multifunction dashboards

In recent years there has been an increasing tendency to use LCD displays for car dashboards. This has happened as a result of a need to display various alert information for safer driving, as well as video data from external view monitors, in addition to traditional instrument panels such as speedometers and odometers. There has also been a demand to display this information in a way that is easy to understand, with sophisticated design sense. PICA200 Lite is a 3D graphics IP core that can be used as a graphics display accelerator for dashboards in order to display instrument panels as realistic 3D objects, or to use three dimensional depth to efficiently design the layout of various information. PICA200 Lite provides optimal solutions for obtaining maximal 3D graphics performance despite strict cost restrictions.