Leveraging Advantages of the Mobile Market for Embedded Designs

Not so very long ago, when embedded designers wanted to reduce costs, they would turn to high-volume PC architectures to drive down development costs. Where else could they find inexpensive components proven reliable in millions of consumer applications, and backed by an ecosystem of easy-to-use design tools and open source operating systems?

Today’s embedded designers in industrial, automotive, medical and other fields are now finding that the smartphone market plays a similar role. Want to take advantage of the scale of manufacturing in the mobile market? Migrate your design to the MIPI-compliant application processors (APs), sensors and displays, and the proven interface specifications defined by the MIPI Alliance.

Of course, the trick to making that transition is figuring out how to leverage your existing investments in highly specialized hardware and software components, while still taking advantage of the highly attractive cost structure in the MIPI-compliant mobile market. For example, how does an industrial systems developer reap the price/performance benefits of a MIPI AP if they have an existing system built around legacy or proprietary interfaces?

Bridging Solutions to the Rescue

What developers in these mobile-influenced markets need is a video bridging solution that gives them maximum design flexibility to build innovative bridging applications. For embedded industrial applications, that might mean they need a bridging solution that will allow them to convert from a legacy interface standard like LVDS to the MIPI DSI interface found on most MIPI APs. For applications using high performance CMOS cameras, designers might need to bridge from the CMOS parallel output to the popular MIPI CSI-2 input on MIPI APs.

In the automotive industry, designers building new applications for Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) and infotainment might need bridging solutions that that can aggregate data from multiple image sensors and deliver it to a MIPI AP via a CSI-2 interface. Or they might need to split a single data stream coming from the AP across multiple displays. At the same time other applications such as drones require bridging solutions that can aggregate multiple sensor outputs into a single stream.

But any successful video bridging solution must deliver more than design flexibility. Each of these applications, needs the capability to support high-resolution video. At the same time, any option used must meet the strict power and cost constraints of today’s systems.

Ideal Solution

Lattice Semiconductor’s CrossLink device meets all of these requirements. Brought to market a little more than a year ago, CrossLink was designed to address barriers faced by the increasingly complex and dynamic video market. Lattice equipped designers with a new way to deliver low power and compact bridging solutions without compromising performance to deliver cutting-edge innovations for multiple growth markets including automotive, AR/VR and drones.

Find out more about CrossLink and video bridging trends here and learn about our recently announced IP cores:

• CSI-2/DSI D-PHY Receiver – Converts MIPI CSI-2/DSI data streams to parallel data
• CSI-2/DSI D-PHY Transmitter – Converts parallel formatted data streams to MIPI CSI-2/DSI
• FPD-LINK Receiver – Converts FPD-LINK video streams to pixel clock domain
• FPD-LINK Transmitter – Converts Pixel Data Streams to an FPD-LINK video stream
• SubLVDS Image Sensor Receiver – Converts SubLVDS image sensor video stream to pixel clock domain
• Pixel to Byte Converter – Converts pixel format data to parallel byte format for D-PHY transmitter
• Byte to Pixel Converter – Convert parallel byte format from a D-PHY receiver into pixel format