A Multi-Core Architecture for In-Car Digital Entertainment

This paper presents a new multi-core architecture for in-car digital entertainment. Target functions vary from terrestrial reception, digital reception, and compressed audio, up to handsfree voice with acoustic echo cancellation and USB media playback, possibly in different user modes like single versus dual media sound. In the near future, new functions like near field communication, wireless streaming, storage, digital rights management, navigation and video become important. The main challenge is that the platform must be open for future functions, which are unknown at design time. Another challenge is to reduce the design effort by maximizing reuse of hardware and software, especially from related domains like Consumer Electronics (CE). This paper describes an multi-core architecture using a networkon-chip, which provides the required flexibility and scalability. The area overhead, due to the network, is estimated to be 1.5% compared to the current architecture. Furthermore, it is shown that the latency is comparable to the current architecture.