Demand is expected to grow in the years ahead for low- and mid-priced car navigation and infotainment systems, such as compact “memory navigation” systems that employ flash memory to store map data and are suitable as dashboard-mounted car navigation systems for compact cars. At the same time, increasing demand for improved functionality and flexibility has led manufacturers of car navigation and infotainment systems to develop low-end and midrange products in parallel with the development of their high-end products, and the pace of this development work is speeding up. As a result, there is strong demand for SoC products that integrate on a single chip the key functions needed in a high-performance and compact car navigation and infotainment system, while also providing connectivity with storage devices such as flash memory cards and USB drives. Another important priority is increasing development efficiency by making effective use of software resources originally developed for high-end products. In response to these requirements, Renesas Technology launched the SH-NaviJ Series in 2008. These compact single-chip devices retain the sophisticated map rendering functions and high quality of the SH-Navi Series*11 of SoCs for high-end systems and offer a carefully chosen selection of functions suitable for low-end to midrange products such as dashboard-mounted car navigation and infotainment systems.
In addition, dashboard-mounted car navigation systems and simple car navigation systems such as personal navigation devices (PNDs), are increasingly being equipped with the ability to receive terrestrial digital TV broadcasts, and this trend is expected to grow in the future. In response to the strong demand for support for such AV navigation and infotainment systems with digital TV broadcast playback capability, Renesas Technology has integrated into the SH-NaviJ Series intellectual property (IP) developed for the popular SH-Mobile Series of application processors for mobile phone systems. The result is the SH7777 (SH-NaviJ3) with enhanced multimedia functions.
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Like the previous products in the SH-Navi Series, the SH7777 is built around the SH-4A, the most powerful CPU core in the SuperH*12 Family. At the maximum operating frequency of 533 MHz, CPU processing performance is 960 MIPS and floating-point processing unit (FPU) processing performance is 3.73 GFLOPS (giga [billion] floating-point operations per second). This ample processing power enables developers to build systems delivering high performance. The instruction set is upward-compatible with the SH-4, so programs developed for existing systems using the SH-4 can be reused. This contributes to a shorter system development time.
As with the SH77721 and SH77722, which preceded it in the SH-Navi Series, the SH7777 has an on-chip 2-D/3-D graphics processor with sophisticated rendering functions. In addition to 2-D rendering functions such as thick line rendering and anti-aliasing, it realized more spatial and real 3-D rendering by enhancing a variety of 3-D rendering functions such as triangle 3-D rendering and texture mapping, making means of expression like multi-texture, etc., possible.
In this way, a highly expressive GUI combining 2-D content such as maps, icons, and menus can be combined with 3-D content such as buildings or landmarks superimposed on the maps, using a single rendering processor. To extract the maximum performance from the graphics processor, high-performance 3-D and 2-D graphics libraries are provided. The 3-D graphics library supports OpenGL® ES1.1, the industry standard, for maximum convenience in making use of the rendering functions supported by the graphics processor. The 2-D graphics library complies with the GDI-Sub*13 specification, which supports Windows® Automotive*14 5.0 Service Pack 2, from Microsoft Corporation.
A unified memory architecture is also used that enables modules to share the same memory, thereby reducing the need for external memory. The external buses provided are a 32-bit dedicated bus for connection of high-speed DDR2-SDRAM and a 16-bit expansion bus for connection of flash memory or SRAM.
The E10A-USB emulator, which connects to a host PC via a USB interface, is available as a development tool. There is also an on-chip debugging function that supports real-time debugging at the SoC’s maximum operating frequency.
Renesas Technology will also prepare a reference platform for system development, according to order, that will offer the following features.
- Peripheral circuits, typical of vehicle information terminals, will be incorporated to provide a realistic verification environment for developers
- Ability to be used as a development tool for software applications
- Additional custom functions can be added by developers
The platform can be used to evaluate the functions of the SH-NaviJ3, to develop software applications, and for other tasks related to efficient system development.
Renesas Technology will continue to develop a range of SoC products for dashboard-mounted car navigation and infotainment systems that provide increased performance with multi-core products and superior functions for high-end systems and optimized performance and functions for low-end and midrange systems. In this way, the company hopes to respond to the evolving demands of the market in a timely manner.
