Product Showcase: Local Dimming IC Enables Large, High-Contrast, High-Resolution Automotive Touch Displays

March 06, 2023

Sponsored Story

There’s been no lack of innovation in the automobile over the past few years, particularly in the non-mission-critical department, where modern cars are getting all the bells and whistles that consumers have become accustomed to, like now-mainstream touch displays.

To that end, Synaptics has developed a local dimming IC, the SmartBridge SB7900, which enables larger, higher-contrast, and higher-resolution automotive LCDs that measure up to 30 in. and offer resolutions up to 6K, all while lowering overall power and cost in the vehicle.

High contrast is critical for display readability. To accomplish this, the SB7900 supports full-array local dimming, which allows independent control of each zone of an LCD’s LED backlight array. By analyzing incoming images, the SB7900 can precisely control the brightness of each LED in the array, enabling contrast ratios of up to 10000:1 while reducing halo, which is the effect of light fringing at the border of bright and dark areas of the image.

The AEC-Q100 Grade 2-qualified SB7900 works with company’s portfolio of touch and display driver integrated (TDDI) ICs to provide OEMs with a proven, cost-effective, efficient, automotive-grade solution. By combining the ability to drive multiple touch and display integration (TDDI) controllers with local backlight array dimming, the device offers superior image quality, greater system implementation flexibility, and reduced device footprint when compared to competitive parts.

The SB7900 also adjusts image parameters in sync with the LED backlight calculations for the best possible image visibility and outputs the final image to the Synaptics TDDI display driver ICs. The SB7900 reduces the overall system BOM cost by optimizing the cost of the LED backlight array.

Additional features of the SB7900 include:

• Standard compliance/support: VESA embedded DisplayPort (eDP) v1.4b
• Multi-data-rate support in main link: 1.62 Gbps, 2.7 Gbps, 5.4 Gbps, and 8.1 Gbps
• Supports 1/2/4 lanes of eDP main link
• High-speed bi-directional auxiliary channel (AUX CH): 1 MHz
• Supports resolutions up to 5760RGB x 1920; 8/10 bit per color pixel input
• Programmable pixel data remapping, and internal built-in pattern
• Digital GAMMA for RGB separate gamma correction function
• Color enhancement (CE) with color space management
• Sunlight readability enhancement (SRE) function

Synaptics is currently sampling the SB7900 to select customers.

The SmartBridge SB7900 will be on display at embedded world in the Synaptics’ booth, 4A-259, along with the company’s other wireless, Edge AI, and audio solutions.