TI to Bring 3-D Surround-View to Entry-Level Cars
Source: Junko Yoshida

The 3-D surround view stitches together separate images from different cameras located in a vehicle. (Source: Texas Instruments)

Texas Instruments is introducing its newest automotive system-on-chip family, in an effort to move 3-D surround-view applications from the luxury category to entry and mid-level vehicles.

Dubbed TDA2Eco, the new processor is designed to exploit the same architecture in TI’s Advanced Driver Assistance System (ADAS) family of SoCs. This will allow system designers to “preserve and reuse common software and algorithm across the board of our chip family,” Brooke Williams, ADAS business manager at TI, told EE Times.

TI boasts that it has several different ADAS processors, all built around a common SoC architecture and tools. “We offer a scalable solution to Tier Ones, so that they can bring new ADAS applications, such as 3-D surround, to the market in a much shorter time frame,” added Williams.

Asked what 3-D surround view application is all about, Williams described it as “a digitally panned view in 3-D.”    By stitching together separate images from different cameras located in a vehicle, it creates a 360-degree view of the car’s surroundings. Williams said, “This gives a driver a smooth surround view, without the driver actually getting out of the vehicle to looks around the car.”

But what would be an example of the common piece of software used in a variety of ADAS SoCs―one for front cam, one for radar, one for sensor fusion and another for 3-D surround?

“Take an example of pedestrian detection algorithms,” said Williams. “Typically, this is where our customers would put their major investment.” He said, “You need pedestrian detection not just on front cam, rear cam, even in fusion or other emerging ADAS applications.” Because TI’s ADAS SoCs―designed for different ADAS applications―are built on one architecture, designers can reuse the algorithm, Williams explained.

What’s inside TDA2Eco SoC?
To enable 3-D surround-view even in an entry level car, TI did some radical surgery on the SoC. “It was literally slicing the chip in half,” said Williams. The new TDA2Eco SoC, for example, uses only one DSP core instead of two, and reduced graphics video engine. The significant cost savings, however, comes from the fact that TDA2Eco processor integrates no EVE (Embedded Vision Engine), which TI designed as “purpose-built vision accelerators.”

But it does come with ARM Cortex-A15 MPCore and quad-Cortex-M4 processors to develop surround-view apps, a video accelerator for decoding multiple video streams over an Ethernet AVB network and Car Black Box support, along with graphics accelerators for rendering virtual views, to enable a 3-D viewing experience.


Inside look at TDA2Eco SoC
(Source: Texas Instruments)

The Car Black Box has already become a must-have feature for vehicles driven in emerging countries, explained Williams. Many drivers in such regions typically want to build evidence against police inquiries. While TDA2Eco offers an LVDS connection for uncompressed video, it can also support Ethernet-based surround view systems, TI explained.

TI’s automotive SoC family
In its ADAS processor portfolio, TI offers a range of processors to accommodate every type of surround-view system. The company explained that TDA2x SoC, for example, provides high performance 3-D, 2.5-D and 2-D surround-view with analytics and a black box.

The TDA3x supports entry to mid-level 2.5-D and 2-D surround view complete with analytics.

TDA2Eco provides entry to mid-level 3-D surround view with a black box, but without analytics.

Williams said that the new SoC comes with a demo 3-D surround-view software app developed by TI’s R&D team. “It’s just a baseline algorithm, but we feel that we need to develop it on our own so that we can learn what’s needed on our SoC processor.” Customers can optimize it to develop their own algorithm to adjust the performance, he added.

TI is currently sampling TDA2Eco processors, expected to be used by high-volume automotive manufacturers.

― Junko Yoshida, Chief International Correspondent,