NEC Electronics has introduced the EC-4260 (NaviEngine-MID) and EC-4250 (NaviEngine-mini) SoCs (system-on-chips) for use in automotive infotainment systems. The new devices are suitable for applications such as navigation, infotainment and telematics systems. The devices are the company's EMMA car series of automotive system LSI devices.
Using three ARM-11 cores from ARM, the EC-4260 SoC operates at 1440MIPS (at 400MHz), while the EC-4250 performs at 960MIPS using two ARM-11 cores. These devices enable design engineers access to an array of software elements, which shorten design time and lower software development costs. The multi-core architecture supports SMP (symmetrical multi-processing) mode. In this mode, a single version of the OS (operating system) runs on the multiple cores, and tasks are dynamically allocated to cores at runtime, maximising the utilisation of available processing power.
The new devices also include a GPU (graphics processing unit) that realises 2D/3D imaging. The EC-4260 SoC enables 2D/3D imaging and supports OpenGL ES and OpenVG specifications. The EC-4250 enables 2D imaging and supports OpenVG specification. These features provide graphics software compatibility.
The products also have a development environment for meeting the needs of automotive customers. For example, for communications, there is support for a variety of protocols, including USB, MOST bus, CAN, I2S and I2C. Also included is an audio routing engine that has sample rate conversion capability. The devices' software supports quick development, including evaluation boards, in-circuit emulator, on-chip debugger, middleware and operating systems, all of them compatible with those of the EC-4270 SoC.
