Altera and TES Electronic Solutions have developed a novel first cost-effective reconfigurable platform for automotive display applications.
Altera and TES Electronic Solutions have developed a novel first cost-effective reconfigurable platform for automotive display applications. TES has provided both hardware and software component libraries to the application. The hardware acceleration component consists of the display controller and accelerated vector engine (D/AVE) providing increased hardware graphics display performance.

This innovative vector-based rendering engine is easy to parameterise and adds new functionality.

The software component consists of an embedded 2D/3D Graphic Multiplatform Library (eGML), which optimises high-quality real-time graphics on embedded devices with small and large display resolutions.

The library provides all functions for handling and presentation of bitmaps, frame buffer accesses and drawing of graphic primitives.

‘This single-platform solution can now be easily integrated into Altera’s devices’, said Wayne Gilbert, Strategic Marketing Director of TES Electronics.

‘It allows the first low-cost graphics controller designs offering reprogrammable parameters for a range of high-resolution automotive infotainment vector graphics applications’.

‘Our partnership with TES means a single, reparameterisable graphics platform can address most applications’, said Jeff Lamparter, Director of Altera’s Automotive Business Unit.

‘This vector rendering engine allows designers to quickly parameterise various features such as TFT, render quality (pixel) and VGA on any of Altera’s FPGAs to target graphics-hungry applications in the automotive sector’.

‘There is now a clear road to living room-like graphics in a host of previously cost-constrained applications’.

Previously, designers were forced to use microcontrollers with integrated graphics and dedicated graphics controllers for specific applications.

This necessitated separate system designs and development delays incurred by semi- or full-custom silicon.

This TES/Altera integration results in systems generating graphic output exceeding traditional systems and providing substantial power and cost savings while dramatically cutting system development time versus ASIC or ASSP implementations.

Altera’s programmable technology is being incorporated into advanced automotive applications, including driver assistance, infotainment and gateways.

In response to the exponential growth in the complexity of automotive digital systems, Altera offers a powerful design platform that delivers a flexible, low-risk design path for reducing complexity and optimising cost-efficiencies.