Announcement of Programmable ASSP (pASSP) Interface Bridge for Mobile Image Sensors and Displays
Low-cost video interface bridge with maximum bandwidth, lowest power consumption, and smallest footprint characteristics

Lattice Semiconductor (Country Manager Jonghwa Lee) announced the industry's first Lattice CrossLink programmable bridge device that supports the latest major protocols related to mobile image sensors and displays.

Systems equipped with embedded cameras and displays often do not support suitable interfaces, or even if they do, the number of supported interfaces is insufficient. A bridge interface is a device used to solve this problem.

Lattice’s newly introduced CrossLink device has opened a new genre called pASSP by combining the flexibility and fast time-to-market characteristics of FPGAs with the low-power and feature-optimized characteristics of ASSPs. As the first product in the pASSP field, the CrossLink device is a low-cost video interface bridge featuring the highest bandwidth, lowest power consumption, and smallest footprint. The new product is the optimal solution for virtual reality (VR) headsets, drones, smartphones, tablets, cameras, wearable devices, and human-machine interface (HMI) applications.

Carl Hibbert, Associate Director of Entertainment Content and Distribution at Futuresource Consulting, said, “The latest trends in image capture and display technology, including drones and VR, have taken the industry by storm.” "When these latest technologies are combined in the mobile phone and tablet sector, which is expected to grow by more than 30% by 2020 from the current 3.7 billion units worldwide, various interfaces will inevitably be used to ensure compatibility," they pointed out, and analyzed that "the ability to manage these interfaces through low-cost, low-power, and small-footprint bridging solutions will be very important."


Lattice's CrossLink bridge provides multiplexing, integration, and coordination capabilities over a single input among multiple image sensors. It also enables interfacing between high-end industrial image sensors and popular A/V image sensors that support mobile application processors. Thanks to these features, it is ideal for a wide range of applications, including drones, 360-degree cameras, action cams, surveillance cameras, DSLR cameras, and augmented reality (AR) products.

By utilizing CrossLink devices, video data can be received from a single MIPI DSI interface and then transmitted through two MIPI DSI interfaces by splitting the bandwidth in half. Because the same video stream can be split across two interfaces, it is ideal for VR headsets and mobile set-top boxes. Additionally, customers can integrate consumer and industrial panels supporting RGB or LVDS interfaces with mobile application processors. For display applications such as HMI, smart displays, and smart homes, CrossLink bridges can convert MIPI DSI to multi-lane CMOS or LVDS interfaces such as MIPI DPI and OpenLDI, as well as proprietary interface formats.

CH Chee, Senior Director of Consumer Product Marketing at Lattice Semiconductor, explained, “The CrossLink bridge combines the flexibility of FPGAs with the performance of ASSPs for video technology. This product can be applied to a diverse range of large-scale application markets that require rapid and flexible innovation, and it enables the solution of the difficult challenge of supporting many interfaces that are hard to fit together in a single device.”