Highly integrated controller instantly displays camera video to prevent accidents

Renesas Electronics has announced what is claimed to be the automotive industry’s first full HD 1080p LCD video controller to incorporate a four-lane MIPI-CSI2 input. The RAA278842 LCD video controller’s four-lane (or dual two-lane) MIPI-CSI2 input supports up to 1Gbps per lane to interface with the newest generation of automotive cameras, application processors and graphics processors. The controller supports a 150MHz single-channel OpenLDI interface, and a mixture of video interfaces and LCD panel sizes with resolutions up to 1920 x 1080. The device is perfect for automotive CIDs and head units, instrument clusters, HUDs, and mirror replacement display applications that are crucial for the growing needs of ADAS.

“The RAA278842 LCD video controller helps automotive system manufacturers develop versatile and reliable display systems that provide superior HMI graphics for analog and digital video content,” said Niall Lyne, senior director, Automotive Mixed-Signal/Power and Video, Renesas Electronics Corporation. “Our strong heritage in video signal processing for backup cameras along with highly differentiated new technology is valued by automakers and Tier-1 suppliers worldwide.”

The LCD video controller has 10-bit per colour processing built into the image enhancement engine to produce near-zero latency, high-quality video. Its integrated video diagnostics identifies if the incoming video is frozen or corrupted and can give a direct path for the rear camera video to be displayed on the LCD. This dramatically enhances rear camera display reliability, practically removing the possibility of a software-related problem causing the rear camera video to be shown incorrectly or not at all. Moreover, as some application processors take a few seconds to boot up, the device can display the camera image on an LCD in less than 500ms, thereby satisfying the fast boot demand of many OEMs.