Automotive

ARM ISP IP Core Delivers Computer Vision Optimizations

ARM's latest image signal processor (ISP), the Mali-C71, marks the first fruit of the company's year-ago acquisition of Apical. Tailored to optimize images not only for human viewing but also for computer vision algorithms, the Mali-C71 provides expanded capabilities such as wide dynamic range and multi-output support (Figure 1). And, in a nod to the ADAS (advanced driver assistance) and autonomous vehicle applications that the company believes are among its near-term high-volume opportunities Read more...

Jeff Bier’s Impulse Response—Will Computer Vision Upend the Automotive Industry?

Earlier this week, Google announced the spin-off of its self-driving car project into a stand-alone business. Will Google become a major player in the automotive industry? Today, that idea seems far-fetched. On the other hand, 15 years ago Apple was a personal computer company, and few would have guessed that it would eventually become a dominant player in consumer electronics and photography. The Google announcement resonated with me in light of a fascinating recent presentation by Mark Read more...

Texas Instruments' SoCs Aspire to Bring Advanced Driver Assistance to the Masses

ADAS (advanced driver assistance systems) are rapidly being incorporated into automobiles and other vehicles, as products unveiled at January's North American International Auto Show in Detroit, Michigan made clear. Just a few short years ago, passive collision warning and active collision avoidance features were restricted to luxury models from luxury manufacturers. Now, even mass-market car suppliers are incorporating ADAS capabilities into their high-end and mainstream vehicles. In order for Read more...

NVIDIA Focuses on Automotive at CES

Automobile-based processing intelligence, both in the form of fully autonomous vehicles and more modest ADAS (Advanced Driver Assistance Systems), garnered exclusive billing in NVIDIA's keynote and booth at this year's Consumer Electronics Show, held last month in Las Vegas, Nevada. The information presented highlighted the growing importance of automotive applications not only to NVIDIA and its semiconductor competitors, but also to their shared customers as well as to their customers, i.e. Read more...

New Chips Expand Automotive Safety Capabilities

Smartphones and tablets may hog the limelight, but advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) represent another hot technology sector. Market analysis firm Strategy Analytics, for example, expects that by 2021, automotive OEMs will be spending in excess of $25 billion per year on a diversity of assistance and safety solutions (Figure 1). Embedded vision is a critical element of ADAS designs, some of which use vision alone, while others combine vision with radar, LiDAR, infrared, ultrasound, or Read more...

ARM Cortex-M7: Digital Signal Processing Drives Family Evolution

ARM's Cortex-A series of high-performance CPU cores garner significant attention by virtue of their use in high-volume, high-visibility smartphones, tablets, and other consumer electronics devices. But company's Cortex-M and Cortex-R processor families, which target embedded applications, are even more widely used. The latest Cortex-M family member, the just-announced Cortex-M7, further boosts performance especially in floating-point and other digital signal processing applications, blurring Read more...

Vision-Based Advanced Driver Assistance: TI Hopes You'll Give Its Latest SoCs a Chance

Embedded vision, the use of computer vision techniques to extract meaning from visual inputs in embedded systems, mobile devices, PCs and the cloud, is rapidly becoming a significant adopter of digital signal processing technology and techniques. This fact is likely already well known to those of you familiar with the Embedded Vision Alliance, which BDTI founded more than two years ago. If you've visited the Alliance website, you're probably already aware from the content published there that Read more...

Embedded Vision Alliance Forms to Catalyze Practical Applications of Computer Vision

A new industry association, the Embedded Vision Alliance, is being formed to help embedded system designers harness computer vision in their products.  BDTI, which has initiated the partnership, believes that computer vision—extracting meaning from images and video—is poised to proliferate into a wide range of applications in the next few years. The success of the Microsoft Kinect—which has become the fastest-selling consumer electronics device in history, selling 10 million units in its first Read more...

ARM Introduces Cortex-M4 Core for Digital Signal Controllers

This spring, ARM added the Cortex-M4 digital signal controller (DSC) to its processor core line-up.  This product brings digital signal processing capabilities to ARM’s microcontroller core line (the Cortex-M family).  At the Embedded Systems Conference in San Jose in April, NXP demonstrated a prototype Cortex-M4-based chip running at approximately 150 MHz.  In June, Freescale announced its Kinetis line, also based on the Cortex-M4.  ST Micro and Texas Instruments have also announced their Read more...

Xilinx Unveils High-Performance ARM-based CPU-FPGA Hybrid Platform

Xilinx recently unveiled a new chip architecture integrating an ARM processor with an FPGA fabric. This platform centers around a dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 processor complex, including hardened memory interfaces and peripherals.  The platform architecture, shown in Figure 1, is intended to behave like a CPU first and an FPGA second.  Specifically, the CPU will boot independently—without requiring that the FPGA first be configured.  Xilinx is targeting markets that require both complex software Read more...