NXP Pushes Hardware Isolation in i.MX8

Junko Yoshida, Oct. 05, 2016 – In response to the rapidly advancing human-machine interface (HMI) technologies demanded by a new generation of cars, NXP Semiconductors is rolling out its latest series of apps processors dubbed i.MX8.

The new family of processors is based on up to six 64-bit ARM v8-A processor cores. It includes a HiFi 4 DSP, LPDDR4 and DDR4 memory support, in addition to dual Gigabit Ethernet with audio video bridging (AVB) capability.

NXP's i.MX8 promises stunning graphics and a reliable display of critical information. It supports natural speech recognition, audio acceleration and high performance vision processing.

But the beauty part of i.MX8, according to NXP, is the safety and reliability inherent in its architecture. It comes with built-in hardware-based virtualization and domain protection. "This is a level of safety protection that no other apps processors have been able to provide before," Kyle Fox, NXP's product manager for the i.MX 8 series applications processor, told EE Times.

The latest trend, commonly observed in automotive "cockpit" designs, is the use of "one processor that runs both the infotainment system and a digital gauge cluster," explained Kevin Krewell, principal analyst at Tirias Research.  This results in running two different operating systems running on the single processor.

"The gauge cluster is a critical system that needs to continue operation even if the infotainment system runs into an unexpected problem," Krewell noted. "The two software stacks are quite different with the gauge cluster locked down by the manufacturer, while the infotainment system may run user applications."

NXP engineers emphasize that hardware isolation holds the key to safe and reliable operations for automotive OEMs and tier ones trying to build multiplatform solutions based on two separate OSes that run on one application processor. Click here to read more

 Back