32-Bit Processors to rule in cars and bikes in the near future
All those display that you see in your car's dashboard will be completely revamped in the near future. Thanks to touch screen displays powered by 32-bit processors. Here you can know more about this 32-bit processors in automobile infotainment systems. Read on.
With touch-based GUI ruling the roost in personal computing products, it's only to be expected that the same technology will become all-pervasive acrosss every consumer electronics segment. This includes not only notebooks, or tablets but also industrial automation and control systems, automobile infotainment and control systems and medical control systems, just to name a few. 
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This evolution will make consumers happier, as they will get a GUI that's smarter looking and more informative on one side and interactive on the other. The automobile sector has already started implementing coloured and interactive, touch-based infotainment and control systems. In India, it's currently visible mostly in high-end cars, but it won't be long before you start seeing them in regular ones as well. So all those old, monochrome displays that we used to see on bikes and low-end automobiles will soon find space in history books and museums.
Advances in Car Infotainment
In recent years, we have seen the addition of 2D/3D navigation systems, 3G/LTE wireless access facility, high resolution colour displays, speech recognition, USB and Bluetooth connectivity, to name a few. These systems are constantly connected to the car's dashboard, to external devices and to the internet. So basically what you desire from your car's infotainment system is only increasing. This causes an exponential increase in the amount of information to be processed and represented in a useful way, thus requiring your instrument cluster to process the same processing power as you get in mobile devices such as tablets.
How 32-bit CPUs Enhance Car Infotainment Systems
A key component that's enabling this technology shift is the CPU used in automobiles. The current generation of CPUs that are being used, at least in India, are mostly 8-bit. But in order to get more interactivity and information for the driver along with high-resolution graphics, 32-bit processors with integrated GPUs are at the heart of instrument clusters integrated with the car dashboard.
By integrating 32-bit processors with a car's dashboard, you can provide much more information to the driver than speed, kilometres travelled, fuel consumed etc. It can provide interactive navigation systems, with complete climate control through graphics, locking facility, music systems etc. These are given as a package within the instrument clusters. Designed for automotive multimedia and display applications, these processors enable designers to re-create a smartphone-like technology experience in the car.
The 32-bit processors these days, are designed to meet the demands of connectivity, real time data delivery, digital instrumentation, audio and multi-stream video, and passenger safety through better control of the car. The new 32-bit processors power a board range of products across apps, including automotive infotainment systems, display-based industrial equipment, IPTV solutions, medical equipment, eReaders, market-specific media tablets and more.
Freescale's i.MX 6 processor family
Freescale semiconductor is actively involved in this field and has ramped up its i.MX 6 processor family to include 32-bit processors. It has also developed micro-controller units to enhance the graphics capabilities for systems based on these processors. Here are the details :
The processor series allows dual-stream 1080p H.264 video processing for 3D class video decoding, Triple Play graphics architecture consisting of console-style 3D graphics with 200 MT/s for excellent display resolution, separate 2D BLT engine for UI acceleration and separate 2D OpenVG engine for vector-based graphics.
Together with an ecosystem of related microcontroller families, i.MX 6 series provides the platform to develop a portfolio of GUI based instrument clusters and other devices, on a monolithic hardware design. The i.MX 6 series is built on a scalable multi-core platform that includes single-, dual- and quad-core families based on the ARM Cortex A9 architecture. The series includes the single-core i.MX 6Solo and i.MX 6SoloLite, dual-core i.MX 6Dual and i.MX 6DualLite, and quad-core i.MX 6Quad applications processors.
32-bit processors to dominate in future
While these 32-bit processors provide such fantastic interaction and information to the driver, they do command a premium on their price and as such are more commonly found in top-end cars. As mentioned earlier, the monochrome, non-touch displays in instrument clusters for both bikes and sub-Rs.10 lakh cars are based on 8-bit processors which, as you would have rightly guessed, are much cheaper. However, the biggest drawback with them is their limited processing capability that prevents any intuitive design to be built around them. In future, with prices coming down, we can expect the 32-bit processors to dominate the automotive instrument clusters.
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