NXP Unveils Triple Breakthrough at Detroit Forum
At this week’s NXP Future Technology Forum Connects in Detroit, the Dutch company introduced three new products for the automotive market. These include the first members of its latest i.MX series of application processors, the NJJ29C0 low frequency transceiver, and an expansion of its automotive motor control microcontrollers.
The newest i.MX series includes three devices aimed at revolutionizing the secure, digital automotive e-cockpit. As cars move toward fully digital dashboards, automakers and their top suppliers need to provide products that deliver both impressive graphics and automotive-grade reliability. These processors are crucial for presenting safety-critical information and supporting features like intuitive gesture control, natural speech recognition, and audio acceleration.
The i.MX processors, which are based on up to six 64-bit Arm v8-A technology processor cores, also feature Hifi 4 DSP, support for LPDDR4 and DDR4 memory, and dual Gigabit Ethernet with audio video bridging capabilities. They’re designed for automotive dashboard graphics, including instrument clusters, infotainment systems, head-up displays, and backseat screens.
These processors can manage up to four HD screens with independent content or a single 4K screen. The specific models introduced are:
1. i.MX 8 QuadMax: Integrates two Arm Cortex-A72 cores, four Cortex-A53 cores, two Cortex-M4F cores, and two GC7000 XS/VX GPUs.
2. i.MX 8 QuadPlus: Includes one Cortex-A72 core, four Cortex-A53 cores, two Cortex-M4F cores, and two GC7000Lite XS/VX GPUs.
3. i.MX 8 Quad: Features four Cortex-A53 cores, two Cortex-M4F cores, and two GC7000Lite XS/VX GPUs.
“The growing interest in connected vehicles is exciting for everyone in the automotive industry, especially semiconductor suppliers,” said Geoff Lees, NXP’s general manager and senior vice president of microcontrollers. “We closely follow the latest automotive technology and security trends with uncompromising quality. As a leading provider of automotive ICs, we are at the forefront of enabling digitally advanced, secure, connected experiences for future cars and their drivers.”
The i.MX 8 series makes it easier to develop, test, and deploy multi-OS platforms on a single processor. The series is built with full-chip, hardware-based virtualization and domain protection. Every resource, from GPUs to serial ports, has built-in protection, ensuring that operating systems only access assigned resources. This increases reliability and reduces risks associated with software-based sharing techniques.
Operating systems can be deployed straight out of the box using the i.MX 8’s split GPU and display controller architecture. This assigns one GPU and display controller to each OS, providing consistent performance without the complexity of para-virtualizing a single GPU and display controller pipeline. These processors can support up to four HD displays with independent content, ensuring that screens remain operational even in case of a system crash, which is pivotal for designing Asil-B compliant systems.
Moreover, they support up to 16 hardware-based firewall domains, isolating crashes, external attacks, and other system issues. The SafeAssure fail-over capable display controllers monitor the graphics pipeline and will automatically switch to a fully isolated display path if a failure is detected. This ensures users continue to see critical information on every display, even during a full processor reboot.
If an infotainment or other connected subsystem is compromised, the hardware-based partitioning ensures that all other e-cockpit subsystems, including safety-critical displays, remain operational. These processors also incorporate advanced security technologies and standards, including encrypted boot and elliptic.
