Smart cockpit offering enables cost-efficient infotainment solutions for smart mobility

The trend in the automotive industry is towards digital cockpits, with buttons and controls disappearing from the dashboard and being replaced by advanced displays. As one of the key systems in a vehicle, the digital cockpit system needs to deliver high-performance features to vehicle users while meeting functional safety targets. The traditional way to achieve such goals is to run the digital cockpit system on a high-performance SoC with a hypervisor. However, the up-front investment required to get started with such a system is in the seven-figure range, and the license fees for the operating system and hypervisor add to the overall cost of the system, making it economically unattractive for mid to low-end car models.

Infineon Technologies AG, together with MediaTek and its design house partners, has developed an easy-to-use cockpit solution based on its TRAVEO CYT4DN MCU family and an entry-level MediaTek Dimensity Auto SoC solution that lowers system BOM costs for hardware and software. In this easy-to-use cockpit solution, the MCU is a safety companion to the SoC to meet the ASIL-B safety target for automotive clusters. The TRAVEO MCU monitors the content rendered by the SoC and takes over with decreased functionality in case of an error, in addition to normal companion functions such as communication with the vehicle network.

“Our automotive SoC, combined with Infineon’s TRAVEO T2G MCU, will provide a cost-effective cockpit solution that delivers new possibilities to OEMs and Tier 1 companies,” said Mr Xiong Jian, vice general manager of the Automotive product line at MediaTek. “This option will greatly boost the performance and capabilities of the cockpit in entry-level car models.”

“A modern cockpit supports the driver and increases driving comfort for all vehicle occupants. That is why it is important to us that cost-optimised vehicle models can also be equipped with digital solutions. Together with MediaTek and our partners, we are pleased to pave the way for digital cockpits for all vehicles,” said Ralf Koedel, vice president Microcontroller Smart Mobility at Infineon. “The TRAVEO T2G CYT4DN MCU incorporates our low-power flash memory, multiple high-performance analog and digital peripherals and enables the creation of a secure computing platform.”

This new cockpit solution supports a resolution of 1920 x 720 pixels for clusters and the in-vehicle infotainment display. The cluster display is driven by the ASIL-B-compliant TRAVEO CYT4DN MCU, providing high reliability. It also simplifies the software and greatly decreases the software cost, as the SoC runs on the open-source Android operating system, eradicating the necessity for a hypervisor and a large commercial operating system. This avoids the requirement for large investments in software or license fees. Suppliers and manufacturers can maintain and update the software, reducing costs.

The device is a family of TRAVEO T2G MCUs designed specifically for automotive systems such as instrument clusters and HUD. Manufactured on an advanced 40nm process, the devices feature a 2.5D graphics engine, sound processing, two Arm Cortex-M7 CPUs for primary processing at up to 320MHz and an Arm Cortex-M0+ CPU for peripheral and safety processing. The family also features a 720p GFX and a unique 327-ball BGA package. Also, the family includes embedded peripherals that support CAN FD, LIN, CXPI and Gigabit Ethernet. Memory options include 4MB of VRAM, 6MB of Flash and 768KB of RAM on a per-line basis.