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NXP 2021 7 2020 CES Super eCockpits – The Future of Infotainment C ar manufacturers are moving to utilize stretch LCDs in the automotive cockpit. The typical HD/4K TV you might have in your house is designed to fit movies and television content. Standards exist that define what a stretch screen looks like, but in general, stretch screens are very wide, often 4K or higher in width but very narrow in height. This enables the display to wrap around your car's entire dashboard, allowing real seamless eCockpit digital experiences in vehicles. The car's driver and passenger benefit is that the stretch LCD screen offers a complete panoramic eCockpit experience. It can simultaneously display driver information such as virtual speedometers, center console controls for music and environment control, and passenger data for entertainment, map, navigation, and a host of other functions. Also, the large- screen real estate allows for a given function to spread out more on the screen with additional details necessary to the passenger or driver rather than being restricted to a smaller screen's real estate. This, in effect, can reduce the overall cost of the car as a single screen can replace multiple smaller screens and their associated wiring harnesses, power supplies, and controls while providing a much more immersive experience for the car's passengers. Although single-stretch screens are unlikely to replace all screens in the car, their existence provides many more options for the car manufacturer to place digital information essential to the driver. An example would be smart side-view mirrors, which are themselves LCDs with cameras. With a stretch screen's larger canvas, the side-view mirrors can replicate what they see on the main stretch screen, reducing the number of times the driver must physically turn their head to see them outside the car. With all these benefits, stretch screens are in demand, popular and convenient, but they also need to ensure safety- critical functions remain intact and accessible to the driver. i.MX 8QuadMax Enter i.MX 8QuadMax applications processor from NXP. The i.MX 8QuadMax is a highly flexible pixel engine enabling customers to build a wide variety of infotainment screen surfaces into their automobiles. At its heart, the i.MX 8QuadMax has two fully independent, graphics processing units (GPU), and display controller subsystems, each capable of driving 2x displays with independent content for a total of four displays. However, each display controller has also been built to drive horizontal widths greater than 4k, which is often seen in stretch displays. For example, i.MX 8QuadMax could drive two independent 4500px x 720px stretch panels with a third 2048px x 1080px 2K panel. The two stretch panels can be independently mounted in the car with different content. The car manufacturer could choose to place them side by side, mechanically bonded to appear as a single LCD, presenting a whopping 9000px x 720px stretch panel. The driver and passengers would not realize that the single large panel comprises two independent panels. The third panel could be mounted as a center console or used as a rear-seat entertainment display. Optimized Product Families for Fail-Safe Display The i.MX 8QuadMax System on a Chip (SoC) is optimized for these nonstandard, panoramic resolutions from the ground up. More importantly, i.MX 8 and i.MX 8X families are designed with fail-functional display capabilities. Each display can be monitored for glitches in screen content or outright crashes of the primary system software. In that event, a separate display path controlled by an on-chip Cortex ® M4 subsystem will take over and display information crucial to the driver, such as speed, PRDNL telltales, engine status, and gas remaining until the problem can be fixed. That brings us to the Consumer Electronics Show (CES ® ) 2020 super eCockpit demonstrations. At CES 2019, we DESIGNED TO DRIVE YOU TO WHAT'S NEXT - I.MX APPLICATIONS PROCESSORS