Traditional GPS vendors are enhancing their product offerings. In February, SiRF Technology introduced the SiRFstarIII-LT GSC3LT and GSC3LTi, navigation engines fabricated on 90 nm CMOS and 0.25 µ BiCMOS process technologies for smaller size (33% and 50% respectively) and half the power consumption of earlier SiRFstarIII navigation engines in GPS-enabled consumer mobile devices. The 3LT and 3LTi provide position, speed, heading and time information with tracking mode power of less than 50 mW. Both chips support SiRFInstantFix, which reduces TTFF to less than 10 seconds.

Also in the GPS category, u-blox AG introduced A-GPS technology that reduces GPS receivers' time to first fix. Standard GPS requires orbital position data from at least four satellites, but poor signal conditions can hinder or prevent data from downloading. A-GPS accesses positioning data from a global network of u-blox GPS receivers that collect data from satellites and send it to a dedicated server. The server calculates the assistance data and transmits it to customer terminals or a client's proxy server.

Chipmakers are targeting telematics applications. Renesas, for example, is targeting cost-sensitive telematics applications with its 540 MIPS/2.1 GFLOPS SH7397 “Euclid” telematics chip (Figure 2). Based on a 300 MHz SH-4A superscale core, the SH7397 is upward code-compatible with the 200 MHz, SH-4-based SH7760 (Camelot). The new chip is at the high end of Renesas' “compact solutions” line. The firm also offers scalable and highly integrated solutions.

The SH-4A core has two separate 32-Kbyte, four-way set-associative cache memories, one for instructions and the other for data. Paul Sykes, product marketing manager for telematics, said the combination boosts throughput by improving the cache hit rate. On-chip, fast-access 16 kb RAM also speeds processing.

Other features include a built-in floating-point unit, a dedicated bus for connection to external high-speed DDR SDRAM, a color LCD controller capable of approximately 64,000 colors on an 800 × 600 pixel LCD panel, and a USB interface with a v1.1 host and a v2.0 function controller. The controller enables connections to mobile phones, portable music players, and other consumer devices. Peripherals include a four-channel 10-bit A/D converter, real-time clock (RTC), six-channel timer (TMU), interrupt controller, and six-channel direct memory access controller (DMAC) for high-speed data transfers to and from memory.

The SH7397 has a serial sound interface and an audio CODEC interface for transmission/reception of voice and audio data in hands-free applications. Memory card interfaces support MultiMediaCard, SD memory card, PC card and smart card for exchange and storage of multimedia and other data. The chip includes a CAN interface, and an Ethernet controller that can be used as a general-purpose LAN interface and as a link for software debugging. It also has a three-channel serial communication interface with FIFO (SCIF), a three-channel serial I/O with FIFO (SIOF), and a two-channel I2C bus interface.

Renesas' Sequoia reference platform provides external memory; debug ports; peripheral functions for audio, display and CAN; USB, PCMCIA, MMC, smart card, SD memory/IO card and Ethernet interfaces, and support for real-time operating systems (VxWorks, WindowsCE and embedded Linux) and middleware. QNX Software plans to add support for Sequoia to the QNX Neutrino RTOS.

Freescale Semiconductor's 885 MIPS MPC5200B (Figure 3), introduced at Telematics Detroit last year, is pin- and software-compatible with the MPC5200. It's based on Freescale's mobileGT architecture/infrastructure (Wind River, QNX and Green Hills Software), and supported by the Media5200 development system, the Lite5200B evaluation board and various third-party firms.

Application development aids include PowerTAP run control tools; the OSEKturbo operating system; CodeWarrior development studio mobileGT edition; and a Linux board support package (BSP) optimized for the mobileGT architecture and Media5200 development platform.

The Media5200 includes 128 MB DDR SDRAM and 64 MB flash; an integrated graphics system with an 8.4-inch color LCD; a multichannel audio subsystem with an AC'97 sound card; camera input; GPS; integrated CAN, J1850 and MOST networking support; two PCI and one mini-PCI connectors, and ATA, USB, Ethernet, S/PDIF and multiple serial connections.