Introduction

The MCIMX51A (i.MX51A) Automotive Infotainment Processor represents Freescale Semiconductor’s latest addition to a growing family of multimedia focused products offering high performance processing with a high degree of functional integration, aimed at the growing automotive infotainment market. This device includes two graphics processors, 720p video processing, dual display, and many I/Os.

Features of the i.MX51A processor include the following:

• Smart Speed Technology—The i.MX51A device has power management throughout the IC that enables the rich suite of multimedia feature and peripherals to achieve minimum power consumption in both active and various low power modes. Smart Speed Technology enables the designer to deliver a feature-rich product that requires levels of power that are far less than industry expectations.
• Multimedia—The multimedia performance of the ARM Cortex A8 is enhanced with a multi-level cache system, a Multi-standard Hardware Video CODECs, autonomous image processing unit, multi-standard audio CODECs, Neon (an advanced SIMD, 32 bit single-precision floating point support and vector floating point co-processor), and a programmable smart DMA controller.
• Powerful Graphics Acceleration—The i.MX51A processor has an integrated Graphics Processing Unit which includes an OpenGl 2.0 GPU that provides 27Mtri/sec, 166Mpix/s, and 664Mpix/s z-plane performance. Silicon version 2.0 of the i.MX51A device includes an independent OpenVG GPU operating at166Mpix/s.
• Interface Flexibility—The i.MX51A processor supports connections to all popular types of external memories: mobile DDR, DDR2, PSRAM, NOR Flash, NAND Flash (MLC and SLC), and OneNAND (managed NAND). The i.MX51A processor also includes a rich multimedia suite of interfaces: LCD controller for two displays, MOS sensor interface, High-Speed USB On-The-Go plus three High-Speed USB hosts, high-speed MMC/SDIO, Fast Ethernet controller, UART, I2C, I2S (SSI), and others.