[November 14, 2009] NEC Electronics Adds System LSI Devices Tweet Nov 13, 2009 (Close-Up Media via COMTEX) -- NEC Electronics announced the availability of new system-on-chips (SoCs), the EC-4260 (NaviEngine-MID) and EC-4250 (NaviEngine-mini) for use in automotive infotainment systems. NEC said that the new devices have the performance, peripheral set, and software ecosystem to meet the demands of high-performance applications such as navigation, infotainment and telematics systems. NEC Electronics first introduced the EC-4270 (NaviEngine) with four embedded CPU cores in 2007. The EC-4260 with three CPU cores and EC-4250 with two CPU cores are now also available along with the EC-4270 to widely support the expanding market of car-navigation systems, particularly in Japan, Europe and the U.S. The EC-4260 and EC-4250 are the first members of NEC Electronics' new EMMA Car series of automotive system LSI devices. The company explained that as the demand for new features in automotive infotainment systems grows at a fast pace, there is a growing need for high CPU performance to keep pace, and at the same time, small power consumption is required. NEC said that its EC-4260 and EC-4250 SoCs address these needs with a multi-core approach. Using three ARM-11 cores from ARM, the EC-4260 SoC operates at 1440 MIPS (at 400 MHz), while the EC-4250 performs 960 MIPS using two ARM-11 cores. Basing these devices on an industry-standard core gives design engineers access to a wide array of software elements, which will both shorten design time and lower software development costs. The multi-core architecture also supports symmetrical multi-processing (SMP) mode. In this mode, a single version of the operating system (OS) is running on multiple cores, and tasks are dynamically allocated to cores at runtime, maximizing the utilization of available processing power. NEC Electronics' new devices also include a graphics processing unit (GPU) that realizes 2D/3D imaging. The EC-4260 SoC enables 2D/3D imaging and supports OpenGL ES and OpenVG specifications. The EC-4250 enables 2D imaging and supports the OpenVG specification. These features provide graphics software compatibility contributing to faster time-to market for system designers. ((Comments on this story may be sent to [email protected])) [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]