Date: 04/04/2012

SoC reference design from Microsemi for LCD displays

Microsemi Corporation announced the availability of the LCD display reference design for industrial and medical applications based on the company's SmartFusion customizable system-on-chip (cSoC). Using this flexible cSoC architecture, the product developers have variety of LCD panel configurability options and the ability to change LCD driver functionality to support product upgrades on a cost-effective, remote basis. The new platform also supports Open Graphic Library Safety Critical (OpenGL SC), an industry-standard pertaining to the development of safety-critical embedded display systems.

Microsemi's SmartFusion cSoC integrates FPGA technology with a hardened ARM Cortex-M3 processor and programmable analog blocks. The OpenGL SC API runs on SmartFusion's integrated ARM processor and thus developers can create graphical user interfaces (GUIs) for standard or customized LCD displays.

The LCD reference design is architecturally partitioned that allows product engineers to harness the processing power of the ARM Cortex-M3 for key system layer control task management and algorithm execution tasks. This supports human machine interface (HMI) functionality and various communication protocols that are typically required in industrial and medical applications.

Features of the reference design -
Fully customizable LCD controller to drive display panels of various interfaces, resolutions and manufacturers;
LCD controller supporting timing generation, color space conversion and alpha blending;
LCD backlight control; and
Hardware acceleration using FPGA fabric, providing tight integration of processor system and programmable logic

Microsemi's LCD display portfolio includes a new non-dissipative LED backlight driver for LCD TV applications. The recently introduced LX27901 is the first device of its type to provide LED driving capabilities in televisions based on the LCD Integrated Power Supply (LIPS) architecture.

The SmartFusion display reference design source files and user's guide are available at www.microsemi.com/soc/products/solutions/display/default.aspx