Inova, Fujitsu, BMW team for automotive multimedia bus

MUNICH, Germany — Fabless chip vendor Inova Semiconductors and Fujitsu Microelectronics Europe have joined forces to establish Inova's APIX serial communications technology as a standard for graphics display interconnects. Car maker BMW has already indicated it is interested in the technology.

Inova developed APIX to transfer video, graphics and other data from a central host to a peripheral display unit. It also can be used to directly couple CCD/CMOS video cameras to a microprocessor board.

The technology is characterized by a low EMI profile and a high bandwidth of 1-Gbit/s upstream plus 2 by 9-Mbit/s for bidirectional control signals, using sideband modulation.

The physical layer provides self-adjustable drive current and pre-emphasis as well as dynamic scrambling in order to minimize EMI radiation, explained Roland Neumann, Inova technical director. Another feature is that APIX requires only two wire pairs for the communication, while competing technology DVI needs seven to eight pairs.

It also offers advantages over Ethernet as a fast and cheap communication standard. APIX, in contrast to Ethernet, does not require a complex protocol stack and offers a higher bandwidth, according to Neumann. In addition, APIX is optimized for streaming video, he said.

The sum of these properties makes APIX 'ideally suited' for the distribution of multimedia and graphics content in vehicles.

While APIX has been around for more than a year, the Munich-based startup now has joined forces with Fujitsu Microelectronics Europe (FME). Fujitsu has agreed to integrate the APIX into graphic controller and microcontroller products.