The smart cockpit technology enhances car infotainment systems, ensuring cost-efficiency and improved functionality for the future of smart mobility.
The automotive industry is shifting towards digital cockpits, eliminating traditional buttons and controls in favor of sophisticated displays. These digital cockpit systems must not only offer high-performance features to users but also adhere to stringent functional safety standards. Traditionally, achieving these objectives has involved using high-performance System-on-Chips (SoCs) with hypervisors, an approach that can be prohibitively expensive due to high initial costs and ongoing license fees, making it less viable for lower-end vehicle models. Addressing this challenge, Infineon Technologies AG, in collaboration with MediaTek and its design house partners, has introduced a cost-effective cockpit solution.
This system utilizes Infineon’s TRAVEO CYT4DN MCU family alongside an entry-level MediaTek Dimensity Auto SoC, significantly reducing the bill of materials (BOM) costs for both hardware and software. In this setup, the Infineon CYT4DN MCU acts as a safety companion to the SoC, ensuring ASIL-B safety compliance for automotive clusters. It monitors the content rendered by the SoC, seamlessly taking over with limited functionality if any errors occur, while also managing standard companion tasks like vehicle network communication.
The updated cockpit solution features a display resolution of 1920 x 720 pixels for both the cluster and the in-vehicle infotainment system. The cluster display is powered by the ASIL-B-compliant TRAVEO CYT4DN MCU, which enhances reliability. By utilizing the open-source Android operating system for the SoC, this solution significantly reduces software complexity and costs, as it eliminates the need for a hypervisor and expensive commercial operating systems. This approach not only avoids hefty software investments and licensing fees but also allows suppliers and manufacturers to manage and update the software independently, further cutting costs.
“Our automotive SoC, combined with Infineon’s TRAVEO T2G MCU, will provide a cost-effective cockpit solution that delivers new possibilities to OEMs and Tier 1 companies,” said Mr. Xiong Jian, vice general manager of the Automotive product line at MediaTek. “This option will greatly boost the performance and capabilities of the cockpit in entry-level car models.”
