Low-Power Intel Architecture Platform for In-Vehicle Infotainment - Part 1: Overview

Further, with the promise of the connected car becoming a reality enabled through broad deployment of multimedia-capable mobile wireless technologies, the automotive industry sees an opportunity to deliver new value-added services to the consumer. However, with today's proprietary head-unit solutions they have limited ability to offer such services. A cost-effective solution to address this need is to use standards-based platform technologies that can take advantage of the huge ecosystem built around PC standards and consumer-oriented applications and services.

Introduction
We will start with the architecture of an IVI platform with a brief introduction to the platform stack and delve into each of the stack components, both from an hardware and software perspective; we will also examine their interdependencies. The theme of discussion for each of these technology areas is as follows:

•  Overview with usage models
    o  By car OEM and end customers

•  Challenges that:
    o  Were overcome in optimizing and enabling various technology blocks for an Intel-based IVI platform
    o  Remain to be addressed now and in the future by Intel Corporation, the car OEM, IHV/ISV/OSV, and academia for various usage models

•  Opportunities that present themselves to:
    o  Car OEM for product differentiation
    o  Third party software and hardware vendors to enable new markets-ecosystem enabling
    o  Academia for identifying areas of advanced research and technology development

An in-depth discussion follows covering the following technology building blocks for blocks for an Intel-based IVI platform:

•  Intel-based IVI platform overview
•  Usage models and software environments
•  System on a Chip (SoC) Architectures for an Intel-based IVI platform
•  Platform boot solution and latencies
•  Multimedia (graphics/video/display/audio)
•  Generic and automotive-specific I/O fabric
•  Intel technologies with focus on Intel® Virtualization Technology (Intel ® VT)
•  Manageability and security
•  Seamless connectivity
•  Power management