Chips eye computationally intensive apps

Embedded applications increasingly are equipped with sophisticated user interfaces, which in many cases include fancy graphical displays. For this kind of applications, Freescale Semiconductor Inc. has expanded its i.MX35 microprocessor family. Two new family members were shown at the Embedded World trade fair.

The two new i.MX35 variations are optimized for computationally intensive industrial and consumer applications. Based on the ARM11 architecture, the i.MX353 and i.MX357 combine the ARM CPU core with an OpenVG graphics engine and cost-effective DDR2 memory interface. According to Freescale, the i.MX353 targets cost-sensitive systems with focus on display tasks, while the i.MX357 integrates an OpenVG 1.1-compliant graphics processing unit. The chip is directed towards applications requiring advanced user interfaces, which in turn call for higher graphics levels.

To fit into the industrial computing environment the company aims at, Freescale also has equipped the device with CAN and Fast Ethernet. In addition, they feature two USB ports along with several ports specific to external wireless modules.

Both devices also integrate an image processing unit (IPU) with dedicated camera interface and an LCD display controller optimized for 24bit WVGA screens. With its abilities to handle display management tasks such as deblocking, color space conversion, independent horizontal and vertical resizing and blending graphics and video panes, the IPU is designed to offload the CPU from all graphics-related processing tasks.

- Christoph Hammerschmidt
EE Times Europe