Everything but the kitchen sink

Using a single SoC to drive a full-blown infotainment stack, 3D surround view, driver monitoring, smartphone connectivity, and dual HD displays.

TI and QNX have been working together in the infotainment space for a long time. The nice thing about this ongoing relationship is that lots of cool technology gets built along the way. Speaking of which, TI have put together a compelling demo that they will show at the TU-Automotive Detroit conference, on June 8 and 9. I’m pretty pumped about it and invite you to take the time to check it out.

The demo is built on the DRA75x (Jacinto 6 EP) SoC, which includes dual ARM Cortex-A15 processors, an Imagination SGX544MP2 GPU, dual TI C66x DSPs, and an IVA-HD video processing core. For starters, it runs the QNX CAR Platform for Infotainment with navigation, multimedia, speech recognition — all the goodies you’ve come to expect. Not surprising, as the platform has been running on Jacinto 6 longer than on any other SoC.

One SoC, two displays, many applications

It’s what they’ve managed to pile on beyond the QNX CAR Platform that makes this demo so exciting. You may not know it but we also work closely with TI on the informational ADAS (infoADAS) front. There’s a full port of the InfoADAS stack available today on the QNX platform and it’s included in the demo. Taking 4 camera inputs and the processing power available on the C66x and SGX, TI can demonstrate full 3D surround view concurrently with everything else. If that wasn’t enough, they’ve added a fifth camera and partnered with FotoNation to add driver monitoring and identification, which runs on the second C66x.

Normally, the smartphone projection runs on ARM, but for this demo, it runs on the IVA-HD to further demonstrate the capabilities of the chip. And to top it all off, the demo drives two HD displays. One display shows the QNX CAR Platform and the other shows the 3D surround view, along with the driver monitoring and identification.

So, to summarize, on one dual-core ARM A15 part, TI is showing a full-blown high-end infotainment system, driver monitoring, the ability to see everything around the car in real time, and the ability to connect to pretty much any smartphone in the world. Take a second to think back to just 5 years ago. It’s amazing how fast this industry moves.

If you aren’t going to be at TU this year, reach out to TI. I’m willing to bet they’d be happy to show it to you…