Freescale Announces World's First Single-Chip Solution for Advanced Automotive Dashboard Displays
Next-generation Qorivva 32-bit MCU optimized for complex and cost-sensitive instrument panel applications

June 20, 2011, Seoul — As vehicles become increasingly complex with interconnected engine, safety, and electrical systems, it has become necessary to display a variety of information—ranging from gauges essential for parking assistance and collision warnings to alerts—on the dashboard so that drivers can monitor it. Freescale Semiconductor [NYSE: FSL, www.freescale.co.kr ] has expanded its Qorivva 32-bit MCU (microcontroller) family based on Power Architecture® technology to support next-generation automotive dashboard applications.

The Freescale Qorivva MPC5645S MCU family is a solution based on the popular MPC5606S family that adds advanced features such as high-quality digital graphics, dual displays, and video input capabilities (for purposes such as camera feed backup), while providing sufficient processing performance to efficiently display data from various internal systems.

In the past, car instrument panels or dashboards were simply composed of a few analog gauges measuring distance, speed, RPM, and fuel level. Given current information requirements, providing detailed status displays to the driver in a way that does not confuse them is a challenging task due to space constraints. Instrument panel design has become required for more powerful graphics processors and increased RAM to control complex displays, while simultaneously keeping Bill of Materials (BOM) costs low. To address these new challenges, manufacturers must address the cost and complexity of the project