14 DAY TRIAL // There was a time when a car's dashboard was pretty simple, with just some needles that bounced back and forth to show you your speed or the amount of gas that you have in your tank, but things have come a long way by now since every car manufacturer out there tries to create a custom interface that should be as eye catchy as possible, Fujitsu just developing a SoC that should make our dashboards even more impressive.
Dubbed the MB91590 "Sapphire" series, these new chips come with dual 800×480 resolution display support, their powerful FR81S CPU core together with a graphics display controller being able to provide car manufacturers with a complete solution for color displays, video input and meter control systems.
What this basically means is the SoC can display impressive dashboard graphics and anti-aliased fonts while its video capture and NTSC-decoder functions can enable image manipulation, including zooming and 90-degree rotation.
Images can also be overlaid on captured video, so parking guidelines can be rendered over the footage you get from the rear cam making parking easier, for example.
"The MB91590 'Sapphire' series offers a single-chip solution for applications that require robust color display and video-input capabilities," said Akio Nezu, senior manager of marketing, Fujitsu Semiconductor America.
"The SoC is particularly well-suited for use in automotive instrument clusters and center consoles that use color displays to generate flexible and intuitive driver interfaces."
The MB91590 "Sapphire" series is available in three different configurations, coming in plastic LQFP 208-pin or QFP 208-pin packages, samples being available right now starting at $18.00, mass production starting sometime during October 2010.
End of it all, I am sure these chips will make their way into a wide selection of vehicles since their low price and complete feature list will most certainly come as an incentive for car manufacturers.