Fujitsu Microelectronics Ltd announced April 22, 2009, that it developed the "MB88395," an LSI that supports the "1394 Automotive" communication standard for automotive information systems. And Honda Motor Co Ltd seems to be considering employing it.
"We are planning to evaluate the MB88395 right away," said Yuji Kawaguchi, operating officer at Honda R&D Co Ltd. Quoting this comment in the news release, Fujitsu Microelectronics emphasized that it made a great progress toward the commercialization of this LSI. The sales target is 500,000 units per month in 2012. Sample shipments started April 22, 2009, with a sample priced at ¥1,700 (approx US$17.3).
The MB88395 features a capability to simultaneously transmit video data from Blu-ray discs, terrestrial digital TV broadcasts and car navigation systems. To achieve this capability, Fujitsu Microelectronics doubled the transmission speed of its previous product to 800Mbps, enabled the transmission of 720p HDTV video and added a function to compress HDTV video data to 1/4 and uncompress it. The previous product can compress data only to 1/3 at best.
The company succeeded in accelerating the transmission speed by miniaturizing the LSI manufacturing process from 180 to 90nm, said Yasuaki Dokko, general manager, Automotive Div, Automotive, Security & Ecology Business Unit, Fujitsu Microelectronics.
The LSI does not support 1080p full HD video because the company determined that small monitors mounted on automobiles do not need (full HD), said Suehiro Kawanishi, manager, Graphics and Imaging Dept, Automotive Div, Fujitsu Microelectronics.
Because of the shielding wire used as a transmission cable, the MB88395 is more expensive than products that are based on "CAN" and other general automotive communication standards and use unshielded cables.
The name "1394 Automotive" was changed from the previous name "IDB1394."
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