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With a promise to revolutionize our driving experience, automotive displays are evolving at an unprecedented pace. In modern vehicles, the digital dashboard with a variety of displays that provide access to all driver controls has replaced the physical mechanisms and panels.

VESA has established a safety and security standard for vehicle displays called VESA DisplayPort Automotive Extension Services (DP AE). Let¡¯s explore in detail the need for functional safety and security of automotive displays in the CASE vehicles and how DP AE helps to meet the needs.

Need for automotive functional safety

Modern automotive displays use DisplayPort or Embedded DisplayPort (eDP) to carry video data from the central CPU to the displays, owing to its high video bandwidth capability. Additionally, DisplayPort boasts of Multi-Stream Transport (MST) feature, which enables multiple displays to be connected to a single DP source port. But what if these displays don¡¯t work as expected. For example, what if your rear-view camera freezes as you reverse your car? The answer lies in functional safety.

Automotive functional safety refers to the safety requirements that must be met by any electronic component involved in the operation of a vehicle, including airbags, seatbelts, automatic braking systems (ABS) and sensors. The obvious goal of functional safety is to prevent accidents and save lives. Since automotive displays provide safety-critical information, they must also meet the functional safety standards. Delayed, lost or frozen frames might compromise safety and can lead to catastrophic events.

How do DisplayPort Automotive Extensions help?

VESA's new DisplayPort Automotive Extensions (DP AE) specification protocol bridges the gap by adding automotive-grade functional safety protocol and security protocol to the existing DisplayPort (DP) and embedded DisplayPort (eDP) standards. It follows ISO 26262, a functional safety standard that applies to all road vehicles. The basic functional safety profile performs cyclic redundancy check (CRC) for every video frame, which can detect frame drops or frame repetition. The more advanced profiles are optional but nevertheless highly recommended. They provide functional safety for the command-and-control data channel. Additionally, they support encryption of the command-and-control channel messages to prevent hackers from reading and tampering any sort of information pertaining to the displays. They also provide security (authentication and integrity) for the data to prevent unwarranted tampering with the video data or display.

Synopsys Display Port Automotive Extension (DP AE) Verification IP (VIP)

Armed with robust safety and security features, Synopsys Verification IP (VIP) for DP  which supports DP AE is the industry¡¯s first and most comprehensive solution for the verification of the DP AE features. The solution includes:

• Support for Functional Safety (FuSa) and Security features for DP (both MST and SST topologies in 8b/10b and 128b/132b modes) and eDP standards.
• Native System/Verilog UVM architecture that allows seamless integration.
• Highly configurable and scalable architecture for multiple verification requirements.
• Built-in protocol checks that check adherence to the specification.
• Debug features that include trace files, debug ports and verbosity-controlled messaging.