Greetings!
QuickLogic today announced our latest Catalog CSSP (#4, by my count), the USB-to-SDIO solution.
In short, this Catalog CSSP enables the translation of USB to SDIO, meant for use in systems whose processors are either SDIO-port limited or don’t even have SDIO ports.
Here’s why we like this, and like it a lot: smartphones and tablets are driving the technology curve for a lot of associated markets such as medical, industrial, and infrastructure. Devices meant for smartphones and tablets are continually smaller, more readily-available, and perhaps most importantly, cheaper. Things like GPS and Wi-Fi/Bluetooth peripheral devices, which may have been designed for smartphones, are now able to find their way into these associated markets. While great on the surface, once engineers and system designs in those associated markets start to design, they often realize that these type of peripheral devices are designed to interface with their host system in a way that is quite different from the way devices have interfaced in the past.
For instance, Wi-Fi/Bluetooth peripheral devices in smartphones interface to the host processor (internally, of course) through an SDIO port. When a medical OEM wants to use one of these smartphones-centric Wi-Fi/Bluetooth modules, they may discover that their processor may not have enough SDIO ports to support all requirements, or not even have SDIO ports.
QuickLogic can solve this problem by providing a solution that translates the SDIO interface to a USB interface. We communicate directly with the SDIO peripheral device, and (internally on our device) encode not only the data to a USB format, but also command and control signals. We then send those via USB to the host processor, which in turn decodes the data and command & control signals. We also perform decoding of signals from USB to SDIO when the host processor is instructing the peripheral SDIO device.
Based on the ArcticLink II CX, the USB-to-SDIO Catalog CSSP is available today by contacting QuickLogic.
Paul- This question is not related to the new CSSP solution but I don’t know where else to put it.
I have seen quite a number of AP companies announcing or releasing new tablet-specific APs. It would seem to me that a tablet AP would have native support for LVDS displays and yet in talking to industry people I am told that they will most likely have MIPI display interfaces. Can you clarify this for me: from your perspective are you seeing MIPI becoming ubiquitous even across tablet-specific APs and if so, what are the considerations that are driving that?
Thank you.
Hey Brian,
No problem at all, and I do appreciate your consideration of where you placed your comment!
You bring up a very, very good question. MIPI is becoming more predominate across tablet-based processors; certainly more so than what was forecasted a year or two ago. I wouldn’t necessarily say ubiquitous, more certainly a lot more prevalent.
I would offer that the reason is mainly two-fold: power and display size.
MIPI is a lower-power interface as compared to LVDS — that is for sure — and with power being one of the main drivers of handheld device design, you can likely see why MIPI is gaining.
With display size, >7″ displays still tend to be LVDS, with 7″ and under being MIPI. CPU makers are anticipating that tablet display sizes are going to vary. As such, MIPI support becomes very important for ‘mini’-sized tablet/phablets.
The good news is that we support MIPI, of course, both on the processor side and the display side, whereas we only support LVDS on the display side, falling in-line with how the market is progressing.
Thanks for reading and commenting!
-Paul
Paul –
Here’s another unrelated question —
MediaTek appears to be undertaking a bit of an R&D effort towards improving displays. Can you tell me how your VEE solution differs from MediaTek’s MiraVision which just came available in Feb?
Thx.
Hello Bob,
Thanks for the question. From the public information available on MiraVision, it appears to be a technology that is combination auto brightness/CABC, with some luma optimization added in.
To compare/contrast, VEE increases the viewing experience through intelligent optimization of contrast ratio, dynamic range, and color on a local basis. There is no mention of whether MiraVision is a local or global-based technology, and so while I cannot make a definitive statement to that, I can say that global-based improvement technologies inevitably improve parts of images to the determent of others (“robbing Peter to pay Paul”). Additionally, I don’t see a whole lot of mention of difficult viewing cases like high ambient light and sunlight.
DPO saves power, regardless of ambient lighting and display content. Technologies whose power savings are based on ambient light levels and display content are notoriously difficult to predict; while some use cases will see greater power savings (viewing streaming video in brighter ambient light), other use cases will see very little savings (browsing the internet indoors). DPO’s power savings are consistent across the board.
That all being said, please don’t take this as a knock on MiraVision. As a consumer, it’s good to see manufacturers paying attention to desires for a better user experience. Speaking for QuickLogic, it demonstrates that the industry sees the need for visual improvement, and QuickLogic feels we are very well positioned with what we believe to be the most compelling technologies in the market, VEE and DPO.
Great question!
-Paul
Hi Paul, your comment to Brian about AP display interfaces got me thinking.
Some time ago, when Andy was giving a presentation at one of the conferences, when he showed your processor slide, he mentioned that BX and VX addressed the display corner of the slide, while smart connectivity covered the rest of the I/O interactions on the slide. The thought occurred to me, “Why not smart connectivity in the display path as well”?
Many times the screen being displayed on the mobile display is dynamically changing rapidly, such as watching a video, or playing a video game. Other times, the display is more static, such as viewing a picture, reading pages of text, or even playing slow interaction games like Checkers or Chess or solitaire. If the lighting conditions remain constant, typical of the device sitting on a desk or table, the display isn’t changing much, compared to the speed of the AP..
In these instances, the displayed screen can stay static for many seconds or even minutes at a time. In these instances, isn’t it a big waste of the AP’s time, by still requiring it to refresh the display 60 times per second? At these times, wouldn’t it be better to let the BX or VX handle the display refreshes, and program the AP to only send a new screen when the buffer has changed?
It seems to me that this processor offloading could be another selling point for your bridging families.
Hello QUIKly_enough,
What you are talking about is frame recycler:
http://shop.quicklogic.com/technologies/frame-recycler/overview/
This is a technology we’ve had as a PSB for quite some time. It’s available today as a PSB on the ArcticLink II VX. We certainly considered it for the ArcticLink III VX/BX device, but there are some factors to consider:
First, and likely primarily, frame recycling (our lingo for what you are indicating) requires a frame buffer (discrete memory) to store the entire frame of data which is refreshed. As you would imagine, the amount of memory required would grow as the resolution of the display grows. A 1080p display may require, depending on memory spot prices, as much as, or more than, $3 in memory alone. This added price is not palatable to most.
Now, that being said, there are processors today which do have the ability to shut down individual blocks within themselves so that only the display path is operating, conserving power.
Additionally,there are displays in the market (“smart” displays) which do have an on-board frame buffer for static refresh modes.
Thanks for the question!
Paul