The international standards organization VESA (Video Electronics Standards Association) has strengthened the safety and security of vehicle displays.

VESA announced the DisplayPort Automotive Extension (DP AE) v1.1, a safety and security standard for vehicle displays.

This update is attracting attention from the industry as it is the first open standard to meet global automotive safety and security standards such as ISO 26262 ASIL-D, UN R155, and ISO 21434.

At the heart of DP AE v1.1 is a C-model software emulator that implements all four normative safety and security profiles.

This emulator is provided in a 'white box' format that can be directly utilized in the design, verification, and deployment processes of actual vehicle display systems, and provides advanced protection functions such as frame-by-frame integrity verification, manipulation detection, and enhanced encryption authentication.

DP AE v1.1 includes the following cumulative profiles to protect the entire automotive display data path:

Profile 1 ensures frame CRC/counter-based functional safety, frame Provides damage, omission, and repetition prevention, and timeout monitoring.

Profile 2 supports complex system environments with additional messaging, routing, and notification capabilities.

Profile 3 establishes a secure channel based on device authentication, preventing counterfeiting and aftermarket modifications.

Profile 4 adds video frame integrity protection and anti-replay protection.

These profiles are applicable to the latest DisplayPort 2.1a and eDP 1.5a-based systems without bandwidth loss, and also support compressed and uncompressed video, Multi-Stream Transport (MST), and up to 16 regions of interest (ROI).

As the number of in-vehicle displays increases, the integrity of the image data transmitted from the ECU to the display has become a safety-related factor.

Previously, there was no standardized method to verify that data transmitted by ECUs had not been tampered with, but the introduction of the DP AE standard established a systematic standard for verifying the presence of noise errors and malicious tampering.

“DP AE v1.1 is a fully executable specification that is directly applicable to automotive display design and test workflows,” said James Goel, VESA Board Member and DP AE Lead. “It provides an open, standards-based approach that enables OEMs and semiconductor companies to implement displays that are safer and more secure.”