Choose low-cost FPGA hardware and IP solutions to accelerate the design of high-definition flat-panel TVs

Not long ago, high-definition flat-panel TVs were a luxury for ordinary consumers. Now, most average-income families can afford a high-definition flat-panel TV. In response to this change, panel manufacturers are expanding production capacity to meet market demand and encourage more people to buy this display device.

Market research firm iSuppli predicts that worldwide shipments of LCD and plasma ( PDP ) TVs will grow from 20 million in 2004 to nearly 90 million in 2009. As technology and display sizes expand, these flat-panel display devices are replacing traditional cathode ray tube ( CRT ) display devices, even at slightly higher prices for the same display size.

High definition, excellent color reproduction, and minimal digital motion distortion are all performance characteristics that consumers seek. These indicators allow consumers to distinguish between different flat panel display models, and products with these characteristics can be sold at a higher price than the lowest entry-level products at a specific screen size.

Some companies mark their unique skills in image enhancement technology on their products, so they can sell their products at a slightly higher price. If you don't want to invest a lot of capital and resources, you want to cost-effectively develop, test, and manufacture such performance for your company's products, thereby obtaining higher profits. Is there such a good thing in the world? The answer is yes, Xilinx and its partners have developed a complete solution kit to help you achieve this goal.

This solution allows display device developers to accelerate time to market. It includes a low-cost FPGA -based display device solution board and several advanced video/image processing IP cores to accelerate the design of your feature-rich flat panel display devices. The display device solution board includes a low-cost optimal logic 90nm FPGA device and memory, and provides comprehensive connectivity to support connection with display panels and video tuning boards.

Why do we need to use FPGA in display device applications?

Designers of digital display products are constantly under pressure to integrate more functions, require more services, support more standards, and demand faster and faster time to market. ASIC suppliers can provide customized chips to meet the functions you need, but they may spend more than a year to develop increasingly complex video/image processors, and you will incur huge NRE costs during the production process.

Although there are many application-specific standard part (ASSP) solutions available from semiconductor vendors such as Pixelworks, Genesis, Trident, Philips and ST, they do not allow display device manufacturers to produce their own proprietary functions for additional profit. Programmable solutions can complement ASIC solutions by making improvements to the entire system more frequently, and can also complement ASSP solutions by producing differentiated products. Such differences come in the form of image enhancement technology, peripheral device interfaces, storage interfaces or connectivity, or even simplified tools such as GPIO expansion.

FPGAs are therefore an excellent platform for implementing these functions because they are programmable and very flexible. In addition, because of their parallel processing capabilities and the integration of many special functions specifically for the consumer display market, FPGAs are particularly suitable for many digital video applications. Examples of these special functions include: support for multiple interface standards for video and display panels, DSP functions, digital clock management, voltage level conversion, and high-speed I/O package selection.

The best FPGAs for logic with these functions are low-priced because they use smaller 90nm process technology and use larger 300mm wafers while maintaining high wafer yields. Interconnectivity is the traditional strength of programmable logic. Today, with the change of standards and interface technologies, FPGA participation is more needed in display device solutions.

Low-cost FPGA-based display solution board

Xilinx now offers a development platform that can effectively design and validate cutting-edge display technologies in flat-panel TVs, rear-projection TVs, and digital projectors to accelerate time to market. With this platform, you can create and modify complex algorithms to enhance the image quality and color settings of display devices.

This low-cost FPGA-based display device solution board integrates the best-in-class 90nm, 1.6 million gate XC3S1600E FPGA chip in a 484-pin BGA package, combined with a configurable PROM and SPI for arbitrary programming of the FPGA. In addition, it also includes four 512 Mb x16 DDR SDRAM memories, which are perfect for supporting frame buffers.

Along with this display device solution board, you get a 266 Mbps SDRAM controller and image processing algorithm reference design. There are also some optional boards provided with this board, which include GPIO, USB , CameraLink and DVI option boards. These optional boards allow easy connection between standard display panels and video boards, and allow you to verify connectivity solutions and video/image processing algorithms.

Figure 1 shows the architecture of the display solution board. As a display developer, you can use this board to develop higher image quality, various memory interfaces, and various features for a flexible, low-cost, high-performance solution. You can also incorporate important display features such as an integrated microcontroller, a 32-bit RISC processor with an embedded soft core, and LVDS, RSDS, and mini- LVDS interfaces, as well as parallel digital signal processing, on-chip memory, and high-speed external memory access features on a single logic-optimized 90nm XC3S1600E FPGA device.

Figure 1: Spartan-3E Display Device Solution Board

Reference Designs and IP

Along with the low-cost FPGA-based display device solution board, Xilinx also provides related reference designs to enhance image quality. These reference designs for display solutions include accurate grayscale correction, image dithering engine, color temperature correction, false contour reduction, etc. Using these reference designs, you can quickly configure a market-oriented basic platform and then develop other further functions, such as sharpness enhancement, dynamic grayscale correction or noise reduction.

Xilinx also has three development teams that provide other display solutions. For example, Digital Design provides fully tested advanced soft cores including OpenGL, Symbology Overlay and Scaling/DecimatiON. Table 1 shows various reference designs provided by Xilinx and its partners, all of which are companies in the industry dedicated to display panel and video development board applications.

Figure 2: Digital display panel and video board reference design

in conclusion

Flat panel display image quality is a highly subjective metric, and the specifications for image enhancement algorithms are constantly evolving. As a result of this evolution, low-cost FPGAs and reference designs allow you to quickly and easily update your image enhancement algorithms. Designers should look forward to low-cost FPGAs, which have been used in large-scale consumer electronic applications such as DVD players, plasma TVs, and high-definition TVs, and their past success ensures that these FPGAs can provide designers with highly reliable, easy-to-use components for consumer applications. Of course, as the cost of this low-cost FPGA decreases, new market-specific functions must be added to keep pace with new standards and reference designs.