Actel LCD Control Solutions
Actel Corporation announced solutions for liquid crystal display (LCD) control applications. The new IGLOO Video Demo Board, LCD adaptor boards with LCD panels, the IGLOO Video Demo Kit (IVDK), and display-related reference blocks use the 5 microwatt (µW) IGLOO field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). The new offerings will be attractive to the power-sensitive designers of portable and handheld consumer, industrial, medical, automotive, and military devices that utilize small-to-medium LCD displays.
In portable devices, LCDs can consume up to 50% of the application’s power budget, escalating the need for a power-efficient solution. Within 1 microsecond (µs), IGLOO devices easily enter and exit Flash*Freeze mode where IGLOO consumes as little as 5µW while retaining the contents of the system memory and data registers. As a result, the flash-based IGLOO FPGA can enable both the LCD panel and the controller to function in a power-saving mode and the LCD data and backlight to be disabled, representing significant battery savings for LCD applications.
Actel’s low-power IGLOO devices can be quickly reprogrammed to adapt and support a variety of LCD displays and changing display technologies, therefore enabling the easy migration between panels as necessary. Further, the FPGAs can absorb additional glue logic and more complex LCD controls into a single chip, thereby reducing board area.
Attodyne, Actel’s partner, offers the IGLOO Video Demo Board, which processes video signals for the LCD display. The video input to the IGLOO Video Demo Board can be from multiple sources, such as a CMOS camera headboard or a DVI-D input. The board can drive the LCD panel through a 50-pin onboard connector or from an LVDS interface through the two RJ45 connectors for Panel Standardization Working Group (PSWG)-compliant single-/dual-channel standard panels.
Initially, three LCD adapter boards will also be made available to demonstrate advanced LCD controller features, such as image downscaling, alpha blending, color conversion and de-interlacing. These boards include a 7-inch, 4.3-inch or 2.7-inch LCD panel with resolutions ranging from 480×800 to quarter video graphics array (QVGA). The adaptor boards include the appropriate connectors, drivers and inverters to the LCD and interfaces with the IGLOO Video Demo Board.
The IGLOO Video Demo Kit combines the Video Demo board with an LCD adaptor board, software and demo, power supply and DVI-D cables to enable users to rapidly start building their LCD controller applications.
The IGLOO Video Demo Kit, the IGLOO Video Demo Board, the LCD adaptor boards, and a range of display-related reference blocks are available from partner Attodyne.
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