Renesas SH7775 SoC for Car Information and Navigation Systems

Renesas announced the SH7775 a new system-on-chip (SoC) solution for car/vehicle information and navigation systems. The SH7775 is a 32-bit processor running at speeds up to 600MHz. This processor can achieves performance up to 1 GIPS (giga instructions per second) and up to 4.2 GFLOPS (giga floating-point operations per second). The SH7775 is the third-phase product in Renesas’s  lineup of car navigation SoCs, which began with the SH7770 and was expanded by the SH7774. The new device is the successor to the SH7770, offering 50% more CPU/FPU (floating point unit) performance.

Paul Sykes, Renesas:

With the addition of the SH7775, Renesas continues to deliver leading-edge products that support the sophisticated features of next-generation car navigation and information systems…

The significant performance level increase coupled with the enhanced peripheral mix enables advanced next generation systems at a reasonable cost…

The SuperH device incorporates a GPS baseband processing function and a newly developed graphics engine that is optimized for map drawing and 3-D images. The SH7775’s built-in graphics engine adds specialized 3D drawing functions for map drawing. Capabilities such as triangle 3D drawing and texture mapping enable more realistic location and direction displays on navigation screens. A wide variety of 3D objects, such as buildings and landmarks, can be rendered as part of the map imagery, and this single drawing engine can be used to draw icons, and menus, as well as maps.

The SH7775’s drawing performance is up to three times that of the SH7770's engine. The result is smooth, high-image-quality 2D and 3D graphic displays. To facilitate system development, Renesas plans to offer the MAPGL graphics software engine, which has a convenient API (Application Programming Interface) and provides a PC simulation environment. It will further improve application development efficiency by cutting development times by up to 66%. At the same time, the software will make it easier to achieve maximum performance from the SH7775’s graphics engine.

Besides GPS baseband function and graphics engine, the SH7775 features other on-chip peripherals including a USB v2.0 host/function, ATAPI , and CAN in-vehicle LAN interface. Various interfaces such as a remote control interface, timers, and more are included, too. The SH7775 SoC device uses a unified memory architecture that allows memory to be shared by different peripherals, so less external memory is needed.

For development, designer can use an E10A-USB emulator connected to a host PC via a USB interface as a development environment. The SH7775's on-chip debugging function allows real-time debugging to be carried out at the full 600MHz operating frequency. In addition, Renesas offers a reference platform that allows design teams to jump-start system development projects. The reference platform includes car information system oriented peripheral circuits for implementing a verification environment, readily accommodates custom user functions, and can be used as a software development tool.

SH7775 processor is packed in 560-pin BGA package. It scheduled to be available in July 2007. Price is $70

More info:  Renesas’s SH7775 for Car Information and Navigation Systems