Welcome back to QuickLogic HotSpot.

QuickLogic announced today that we now have a daughter card available that connects to the DragonBoard (based on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Processors).  Our card accepts the MIPI-DSI output of the DragonBoard.  It embeds a QuickLogic ArcticLink III VX5 CSSP device that converts the MIPI-DSI signal to LVDS.  As it’s a VX device, VEE and DPO are integrated (after all, and VX remains our focus product in the visual market).  The LVDS signal is then sent to the attached LVDS display.

Avid readers of this blog and followers of QuickLogic know what advantages this type of board provides, but for those who don’t fall into those categories, here are some reasons why we really like this:

(1) An Evaluation Tool for VEE and DPO

When a customer receives the daughter card from QuickLogic, they can plug it into their DragonBoard and the entire system will work out-of-the-box immediately.  The customer (OEM/ODM/system designer, whichever it may be) can immediately begin evaluating how VEE and DPO perform, with the added assurance of how it will perform with the processor the customer may be planning to use.  To be frank, our experience is that VEE and DPO’s performance is equally good regardless of the processor used; for customers who do require extra assurance of this with their specific processor (Snapdragon, in this case), this daughter card is perfect.

(2) A Known-good Starting Point

We provide the circuit and board-level schematics for the daughter card.  As they are “known-good” (meaning, they work!), the customer could certainly transfer these directly into their system design, which can shorten their design time and lessen design cost.

(3) Evaluation of their Display with VEE and DPO

While MIPI-DSI displays tend to be have 100% unique connectors and pin outs, LVDS displays (like the one on the QL daughter card) tend to be more standardized.   In the past, we’ve been able to swap some (read: not all) LVDS displays with little or no work.  Should a customer be considering VEE and DPO for a project they are working on that incorporates an LVDS display, we may be able to swap in that display.   Unlike the processor example earlier, our experience is that VEE and DPO’s performance does change depending on the display–interestingly enough, the better the display, the more advantageous our technology is.   Swapping the customers LVDS display onto the QL daughter card (if possible) allows the customer to gauge how much visual improvement we can provide with VEE, and can also allow an estimate of DPO’s power savings abilities.

Questions?