Driving the Future: FPGAs and the Technological Evolution of Automotive In-Cabin Experiences

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Mark Hoopes, Director, Industrial & Automotive Segment at Lattice Semiconductor

The Automotive industry is undergoing a massive technological transformation. Today, most of the modern vehicles seen on the road are equipped with advanced software technology — and the wave is only just getting started. The software-defined vehicle (SDV) market size was $35.6 billion in 2022 and is expected to be $210.88 billion by 2032, growing at a CAGR of 19.47%. However, as SDVs grow more popular, consumers expect better in-cabin experiences that can be difficult for Automotive manufacturers to deliver quickly. For the first time in 28 years, JD Power’s Automotive Performance Execution and Layout survey showed a major decline in consumer satisfaction with their cars—indicating that manufacturers need to have a better understanding of what car owners really want in their vehicles and ensure that the technology included is useable, useful, and high-quality.

As the Automotive industry continues to shift towards technologically driven vehicles, seamless in-vehicle infotainment features are quickly becoming a necessity. As a result, manufacturers are turning to Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) to keep up with the evolving landscape and consumer demands.

The Secret to a Successful In-Cabin Experience

Today, a top-notch in-cabin experience means integrating all the features you’d find in any smart technology, such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, streaming audio, and video. To support these features, high-quality displays are needed in various locations throughout the car, including the central entertainment hub, the instrument cluster, heads-up displays, and rear displays. FPGAs help solve multi-display connectivity and processing requirements in vehicles by providing flexible connectivity and adaptable processing.

As consumers become more accustomed to the high contrast and great color fidelity displays of their smartphones and TVs, they expect the same from their Automotive displays. For these displays, most manufacturers are leveraging LCD screens. While OLEDs (organic LEDs) are typically seen as the “obvious choice” for displays due to their excellent contrast ratios and pleasing images, they’re not as well suited for vehicles that experience difficult lighting conditions or wide temperature ranges, and require longer lifetimes than consumer devices. LCD screens, on the other hand, are widely available in various sizes and resolutions, reasonably priced, and durable in harsh Automotive temperature environments.

For optimal viewing experience, LCD screens utilize local dimming technology. Local dimming is designed to enhance viewability by increasing the contrast ratio. By dividing the backlight into multiple zones, local dimming enables local control over brightness and contrast. For instance, when a particular zone requires darkness, the local dimming algorithm reduces the backlight intensity in that area, effectively darkening the corresponding pixels, and the opposite occurs for zones with bright content.

Local dimming can operate in two distinctive ways: Full-array and edge-lit. Full-array local dimming offers more precise control and can produce better contrast and black levels. It involves an LCD panel with an array of LEDs positioned directly behind it and divided into zones. While the number of zones employed directly elevates the performance, it also makes the design more complex and costly, so often there is a need to offer a range of zones to meet premium, mid-range and lower cost product targets. Edge-lit local dimming includes LEDs located along the edges of the display panel, illuminating the entire screen using a light guide or diffuser. Local dimming is achieved by dynamically adjusting the brightness of different LEDs along the edges, offering the lowest cost but lacking quality achievable with zonal backlighting.

While local dimming is crucial for high quality infotainment systems, it can also be a compute-intensive function that makes it challenging to deploy. Local dimming algorithms must account for the various zones, continuously monitoring changing lighting conditions and display content to adjust brightness, contrast, and backlighting accordingly. Glare reduction is also a key factor, as glare from external light sources, such as sunlight or oncoming headlights, can impact the display’s visibility. Local dimming technology optimizes and improves image quality and visibility even under the worst lighting conditions.

As local dimming-based displays become integral to infotainment systems and the in-cabin experience, FPGAs are a unique and well-matched tool to meet these newfound technological needs.

How FPGAs Elevate the In-Cabin Experience

FPGAs — reprogrammable and customizable integrated circuits — are an excellent choice for implementing local dimming in infotainment systems. Their real-time, high-speed processing capabilities are ideal for analyzing and displaying content, adjusting backlight zones, and controlling brightness. In addition, FPGAs are equipped with the necessary horsepower and high-speed I/O to handle the complex algorithms and computations needed for local dimming and can also allocate additional hardware resources for local dimming operations. They are reliable and resilient, capable of withstanding hard environmental conditions like temperature variations and sock vibrations. Lastly, due to higher performance requirements, FPGAs use a rich mix of I/O interfaces to support a wide variety of LED displays, including LVDS, eDP, DisplayPort up to HBR3.8.1, and a broad range of zones and resolutions up to 4K.

Because FPGAs are inherently adaptable, they also enable supply chain flexibility at both the system and component levels—empowering manufacturers to scale vehicle production. Additionally, as in-cabin experiences continue to evolve and become more complex, FPGAs reprogrammability allows developers to implement new algorithms, control strategies, and enhancements. This flexibility also grants developers the ability to choose from a much wider array of vendors for LCDs and LEDs, showcasing how FPGAs can scale to a wide range of customer needs, algorithms, and performance needs.

FPGAs are an effective local dimming tool in Automotive infotainment systems.

An Advanced Automotive Future

The in-cabin experience will only grow increasingly important as SDV vehicles become more popular. FPGAs are a useful tool to help navigate this technological transformation and ensure manufacturers are meeting consumer demands. They have emerged as a key enabler for top-tier infotainment systems — and local dimming in particular — and are poised to play a vital role in the future of Automotive manufacturing.

As manufacturers look to keep up with consumer demands and rapidly changing cutting-edge technologies, FPGAs will ensure that modern vehicles not only meet these expectations but deliver an unparalleled driving experience.

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