Nothing new. That was the conventional wisdom about CES 2012 in Las Vegas. Well, after spending two days last week at the show, I think the conventional wisdom is wrong. There are many new and cool electronic products at the show and they all point to exciting times for Spansion and our customers. Why?
Time flies. I can’t believe it is almost the end of the year already. For many, that means the shock of holiday shopping starts to set in, but for me, it is time to start watching the parade of announcements from the automakers as they roll out new models and announce their latest technology breakthroughs. TV commercials, magazines, social media and of course, the car shows, will all be a buzz about the newest must-have features and 2012 models.
I work closely with many of the major auto companies in my role at Spansion so I get to see what’s coming before most. Some of the trends that you will hear a lot more about over the coming months are advanced applications of Bluetooth, cloud-connected electronics and advanced safety systems.
I personally am most excited with what’s happening behind the steering wheel. The dashboard is undergoing a major upgrade. Your classic speedometer, odometer, warning signals, known as the instrument cluster, is moving to TFT (thin film transistor) displays. The mechanical gauges are going digital. We’ve already seen the change in some luxury cars but it is making its way into mainstream vehicles.
Riding the Smartphone and Tablet Wave
Thanks to the proliferation of smart phones and tablets, the price of TFT displays has dropped significantly over the last couple years. The affordability of displays has allowed the automakers to use them more widely within the car and throughout their product line. It is no longer a luxury for the auto elite.
I’m excited about TFTs, not because of the “cool factor,” but for safety. The screen will provide important data to enable safer and smarter driving. The information will be the most relevant data depending on the driving environment or health status of the car. It will be a smart display that knows what to tell you and when. It will have to support rich graphics, 3D imagery, multi-languages, and even high resolution video.
Bringing High Technology Mainstream
Advances in automotive electronics will make the roads a safer place, but only to the degree the technology proliferates throughout all car segments. Collectively the industry needs to optimize systems to make it affordable.
Spansion is doing its part by focusing on the memory subsystem with our chipset partners. Our newly announced Spansion® FL-S family is great example of this. We are using the low pin count serial interface to strip out complexity in the printed circuit board, simplifying the connections to the microcontroller. And by delivering a high-performance double data rate serial Flash memory that is capable of 66 MB/s reads, automotive designers can simplify designs further by removing DRAM altogether in the TFT display and execute and render graphics directly from the Spansion FL-S memory.
It is innovation like this that is needed to advance the start of the art, affordably, so it can reach the masses. I’m very excited to see the new crop of cars that are coming in 2012 and the coming years.
The LA Auto Show is right around the corner, November 18-27. All of the latest advancements and a look into the future will be on display. I’ll be watching all the excitement and will share my thoughts with you after the event.
My colleague Anthony Le and I have both been blogging about the transformation of the car in recent months for Memory Matters. Truly, the car is turning into one of the most advanced consumer electronics devices on the market. The dashboard is morphing from gauges and dials into a digital display, the center console’s nobs and buttons is replaced with a touch screen interface and cameras and sensors are scattered throughout the exterior to help actively protect your safety. Today it seems like there are more processors and memory in a car then you’ll find at your local Best Buy.
The car is definitely changing and so are the requirements from the world’s automakers. In order to enable this shift, automakers are ratcheting up the performance requirements of its electronic systems. For instance, the call for instant-on performance is getting louder. Automaker specifications for next generation digital instrument clusters and infotainment systems are cutting boot time requirements in half, increasing the need for higher performance memory and processing.
Spansion announced samples of its new Spansion® GL family in mid February and we met our commitment to move into production in the second quarter with 1 Gb and 512 Mb versions of the Spansion GL-S NOR Flash memory. With industry-leading read performance, Spansion GL-S NOR Flash is delivering the fast boot times, real-time feedback and high reliability automakers require for a safe driving experience. Spansion GL-S solutions are actively being qualified with leading automotive electronics customers in North America, Europe and Japan.
Of course, the automotive industry is just one example. The benefits of the family extend beyond automotive and are bringing innovation to consumer electronics, gaming, and telnet applications as well thanks to a 45% read performance advantage and the fastest programming speed over competing NOR Flash products.
A datasheet on this NOR Flash family is also available to download from our website.
You can learn more about the family in this SlideShare presentation on Spansion GL-S NOR Flash.
When you think of NVIDIA, most consumers have thoughts of advanced graphics chips for PC gaming. Its GeForce line has long been heralded for its realistic 3D visuals, screaming performance and fast interactive game play. That type of innovation is what NVIDIA has been known to deliver. So what’s a graphics processing unit (GPU) doing inside the car?
The Car: The Most Advanced Consumer Electronics Device Around
It’s not that odd of pairing if you think about it. Look at all of the changes happening in automotive electronics. Behind the steering wheel, the mechanical gauges are being replaced with digital screens. The center console is no longer the series of nobs and switches to control a CD player, stereo and air conditioning, but rather a large touchscreen display that lets you manage many of the car’s systems.
These new displays are also becoming a key safety element of the vehicle. Information is being collected throughout the automobile and from external conditions and fed to the driver so they are fully aware of the car’s health and potential hazards on the road. Advancements in auto electronics are enhancing the driver’s ability to navigate a vehicle while making that journey more comfortable and entertaining for the passengers.
Given these changes, it makes a total sense for NVIDIA to bring its technology to the car. These advanced displays demand instant-on performance and rich 2D and 3D user interfaces. NVIDIA has been providing those features to gaming for years.
NVIDIA: A Welcomed Addition
For those that follow semiconductors, you probably already know NVIDA has been catering to profession and science markets for some time. They have been making steady inroads in automotive as well, which was very apparent at this year’s consumer electronics show (CES) in Las Vegas. NVIDIA’s Tegra 2 processors are making its way into Audis, BMWs and the upcoming Model S form Tesla. Check out NVIDIA’s automotive page to read more on their automotive focus.
NVIDIA has some formidable competitors in automotive including Freescale, Infineon, Renesas and Texas Instruments. These companies have been focusing on the auto market for decades so the competition will be tough. I’ve been fortunate enough to work closely with all of these companies over the years as Spansion brings its NOR Flash memory solutions to market to support these continual advancements in automotive. It is an exciting segment and NVIDIA is a welcomed addition.
Today’s innovations in automobile design result from the growing demand for more electronics within the car. Cars now come with state-of-the-art audio and video systems, high-tech and graphic-rich navigation systems, and wireless technologies for many types of communications.
Safety electronics is on the cusp of making a quantum leap forward with advanced driver assistance systems (ADASs), which are involved with braking, steering, and collision avoidance. When drivers become distracted, the risk of an accident quickly increases. In 2008 alone, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), 6000 Americans died due to a distracted driver and another 500,000 were injured.
2010 Range Rover gets a 12-inch wide virtual gauge cluster
Automakers are now turning their attention to accident prevention, with a focus on improving the driver’s experience. To lessen distractions, key vehicle and driving information needs to be displayed in front of the driver, specifically in the dashboard.
The instrument cluster, a space once reserved for electromechanical gauges and light indictors, is transforming into a new digital information center for drivers. Thanks to the advancement and maturing reliability of digital thin-film-transistor (TFT) displays, improved signal processing power, and high-speed digital communication, analog-based systems are rapidly migrating to digital system displays.
Today’s dashboards built around TFT displays still provide basic vehicle information, such as drive train position, speed, fuel levels, and engine status, while bringing in additional data from outside the car. This added information comes from new innovations like 360° cameras, night vision, lane-departure warning, blind-spot detection, and 3D graphic navigation data.
Digital clusters enable a more cost-effective and flexible means to converge all vehicle and safety information, which further minimizes any unnecessary distractions. The driver no longer needs to look down or fumble with the center console searching for music, make phone calls, look up driving directions, or turn one’s head to look at a blind spot.
While these new advances offer many new and exciting options, they also require designers to find innovative solutions to control costs as well as deliver critical performance capabilities and ensure long-term product reliability. Spansion’s NOR Flash is the ideal solution to meet system designer’s requirement for performance, reliability, and cost. The following article provides a nice overview.
The automotive industry has always been a competitive market but the environment has definitely changed and competition has increased over the past couple years. OEMs are looking for new areas of innovation to differentiate and win. The result is a plus for the consumer as we’re seeing more features from safety to entertainment making their way down into the mid and low-end segments.
The industry has made great advancements in protecting drivers from injury but that attention is increasingly focused on accident prevention. Airbags, crumple zones and stability control have become mainstream, advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) represent the next wave of innovation in auto electronics.
For me, ADAS is one of the most interesting areas of development and differentiation today. It is also predicted to be one of the fastest growing segments in automotive electronics. iSuppli forecasts a 29% annual growth rate for ADAS in North America alone, reaching 30.7 million vehicles by 2017.
Why the focus on ADAS? It’s true, safe driving experiences have always been a goal for automakers. There is a convergence of forces at play though today from government regulations to the need to differentiate from the competition as I noted above. New regulations are upping the ante for automakers as studies suggest 80% – 90% of crashes are caused by driver error. Accident prevention is now the grand prize.
Here are some key data points that support this movement:
Common ADAS features include adaptive cruise control, blind-spot monitoring, lane-departure warning and night vision. The futuristic and controversial ADAS features are the ones that actively help drivers avoid accidents by taking control away from the driver. The capability relies on a network of cameras, sensors, radars and lasers. While these new capabilities are heralded to prevent accidents from occurring and saving lives they come with a high price tag that could hamper adoption.
Dean McConnell, director-PSAD Customer Center at Continental was quoted in a recent Wards Autoworld safety article citing component costs:
Radars and lasers in the car sound like something out of a James Bond movie – auto electronics are definitely getting much more complex. The challenge will be to see how the supply chain can innovate and simplify this complexity and at a price point that allows for widespread adoption. And this all needs to happen while adhering to the same stringent demands for components to live through the life of the car. No small feat.
I think it is an exciting time to be involved in the automotive ecosystem. The gauntlet has been laid by Volvo when they stated their goal for an “injury proof” car by 2020. How will the industry respond? Can cost be controlled to drive these innovations mainstream?