Publication date: 24 January 2012
Toshiba Electronics Europe has announced that sales of its Capricorn family of intelligent display controllers have exceeded 5 million units since they began shipping in 2005. The Capricorn family, comprising Capricorn-2, -M, -A and –F variants, has been widely adopted by automotive manufacturers in a broad variety of models. Toshiba estimates that Capricorn has captured more than 50% of the global market share for automotive primary instrument clusters incorporating TFT graphics, an application area that is forecast to grow significantly over the next 5 years.*
“We are proud of the positive reception Capricorn has received from automotive manufacturers,” said Peter Lieberwirth, General Manager, Automotive Segment at Toshiba Electronics Europe. “More than 5 million sales of Capricorn is an amazing achievement, and we continue to evolve this product family in order to provide vehicle manufacturers with an integrated system solution that meets their current and future market demands.”
Capricorn, named for the zodiac sign shared by the two original inventors, is a family of RISC-based system-on-chip (SoC) processors for automotive displays that offers an extremely high level of system integration. Capricorn graphic processors provide solutions for driving and managing the colour TFT displays increasingly found in instrument clusters in medium to high-end vehicles.
To continue meeting the growing and changing demands of the automotive market Toshiba is currently developing further Capricorn variants.
*Based on market data from Strategy Analytics. Automotive Displays - Market Drivers, November 2010.
Toshiba Electronics Europe (TEE) is the European electronic components business of Toshiba Corporation, which is ranked among the world’s largest semiconductor vendors. TEE offers one of the industry's broadest IC and discrete product lines including high-end memory, microcontrollers, ASICs, ASSPs and display products for automotive, multimedia, industrial, telecoms and networking applications. The company also has a wide range of power semiconductor solutions. TEE was formed in 1973 in Neuss, Germany, providing design, manufacturing, marketing and sales and now has headquarters in Düsseldorf, Germany, with subsidiaries in France, Italy, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom. TEE employs approximately 300 people in Europe. Company president is Mr. Takashi Nagasawa.
Toshiba Corporation is a world leader and innovator in pioneering high technology, a diversified manufacturer and marketer of advanced electronic and electrical products spanning digital consumer products; electronic devices and components; power systems, including nuclear energy; industrial and social infrastructure systems; and home appliances. Founded in 1875, Toshiba today operates a global network of more than 490 companies, with 203,000 employees worldwide and annual sales surpassing US$77 billion.
For more information visit Toshiba Electronics Europe's web site at www.toshiba-components.com
Capricorn was developed to support growing demands from vehicle manufacturers to reduce the cost, complexity and component count of implementing colour TFT displays in sizes from typically 3-inch to 14-inch and with resolutions from QVGA up to WUXGA. Its graphics processing and display control capabilities are delivered by an integrated graphics display controller (GDC) together with specialised accelerator engines. The graphics accelerators enhance the display output through several handling functions offering very high quality that ensure smooth display of changing graphical objects.
