Click on the advert above to visit the company web site

Product category: Microprocessors, Microcontrollers and DSPs
News Release from: Fujitsu Microelectronics Europe | Subject: Carmine and Lime
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial Team on 16 February 2006

Controllers put 3D graphics on the road

Two graphics display controllers designed for the embedded automotive market include the world's first controller for this sector to be fabricated in 90nm technology.

Fujitsu Microelectronics Europe (FME) has announced the launch of two graphics display controllers (GDCs) designed for the embedded automotive market, including the world's first controller for this sector to be fabricated in 90nm technology The two GDCs, dubbed Carmine and Lime, have been developed in response to customer requests for FME to enhance its extensive GDC roadmap at both the higher and lower ends

The Carmine MB86297 is the third generation of high-end graphics products developed by Fujitsu, incorporating a brand new design that offers more than ten times the performance of FME's previous highest end GDC - Coral.

This 90nm device is fabricated in Fujitsu's own foundry at Mie, Japan and was developed to ensure that FME can provide an industry-leading solution for demanding automotive functions such as high-end graphics and multimedia applications.

Carmine offers excellent 3D performance - up to 10Mpolygons/s - the highest rendering performance available in the embedded market, and the OpenGL ES 1.1 Standard for Embedded Accelerated Graphics is fully supported.

The device can display resolutions of up to 1280 x 1024, and has a fully independent dual display output.

Carmine features excellent expansion options that include a DDR-SDRAM interface for the addition of up to 128Mbyte graphics memory and a PCI66 host interface.

The MB86276 Lime GDC is also a new device manufactured specifically for price optimisation, providing a low-end extension to FME's GDC roadmap.

The 0.18um Lime device is an ideal solution for lower-end automotive applications that do not require 3D functions.

Although Lime is aimed at the lower end of the market, the device offers advanced features, such as accelerated 2D functions.

Dual RGB digital output is supported and the device displays resolutions of up to 1280 x 768.

A range of connection options are available, including a 32/16bit embedded host interface, GPIOs, I2C interface and an external SDRAM interface for the addition of up to 64MB of memory.

In line with FME's full range of graphics display controllers, both Carmine and Lime are fully binary compatible - unlike the spot products offered by others in the market.

The devices offer universal connectivity to all MCUs and other CPUs, with a wide variety of operating system drivers available, as well as several unique features, including video inputs.

FME's extensive roadmap and the excellent scalability of all devices in the series mean that products are interchangeable, allowing customers to move to higher- or lower-end devices without having to make major software changes.

Although Carmine and Lime have been developed with the Automotive market in mind, they are also suitable for a range of other markets that include avionics, marine, medical, industrial, POS, surveillance and console-gaming.

Both Carmine and Lime are housed in BGA packages.

They are available for sampling now and will be in full, 100,000-unit a month production, by the middle of 2006.

The devices will be offered at competitive prices, with full engineering support for Europe available from FME's GDC application team based in Frankfurt.

FME continues to invest heavily in research and development to further expand its range of GDCs to offer its customers the widest variety of solutions.

The company is already working on derivations of these two products to offer more functionality; a Lime-based GDC featuring a CPU is already in planning as well as a Carmine-based GDC with additional media functions. Request a free brochure from Fujitsu Microelectronics Europe ...

Fujitsu Microelectronics Europe: contact details and other news
Email this article to a colleague
Register for the free Electronicstalk email newsletter
Electronicstalk Home Page

Search the Pro-Talk network of sites