Helio View Adds LCD Touch-Screen Graphics Capability For Embedded Designs

SAN DIEGO, Calif, December 11, 2013 -- Macnica Americas today announced that it is now shipping a new version of the Helio evaluation platform for Altera® Cyclone® V SoC designs that incorporates a 800x480 WVGA TFT LCD display with capacitive multi-touch and HDMI input/output capability. The new Helio View development platform is sold under the Mpression brand by Macnica Group companies worldwide. Helio View is distributed in North America by Macnica Americas.

"Macnica is pleased to add the graphics and video capability of the Helio View display to the Helio kit." said John Burton, President of Macnica Americas, Inc.  "This is now the ideal platform to develop embedded SoC designs for industrial, medical, or instrumentation designs that need touch screen or graphics capabilities."

The Helio View display kit adds an 800x480 WVGA TFT LCD display with capacitive multi-touch capability and HDMI input and output ports to the Helio board. The display integrates closely with the Altera Cyclone V SoC and its dual-core ARM® CortexTM-A9 processor. The Cyclone V SoC allows users to reduce system power, system cost, and board space by integrating a hard processor system, which consists of a dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 processor, a rich set of peripherals, and memory controller, with the FPGA fabric using a high-bandwidth interconnect backbone.. The Helio View display can utilize the ARM processor in the Cyclone V SoC to perform advanced graphics support. A reference design demonstrating the fundamentals of graphics rendering using Linux and DirectFB libraries is available on the Helio Kit web page.

The Helio View Kit complete with LCD display and base Helio board is available today and is priced at $595 each for US customers. A display upgrade kit for current Helio board users is also available at $349 each for US customers. Further information on the Mpression Helio View development platform or to purchase online, visit the Helio Kit web page at www.macnica-na.com/heliokit.   

 About Macnica Americas

Macnica Americas is a fully franchised semiconductor distributor covering North America with expertise in design services, IP, applications support, and logistics. We are a division of Macnica Inc, a $2.4B global leader in semiconductor distribution and design services. The Macnica Americas IP portfolio includes solutions for high speed networking, broadcast video, DSP and embedded applications.

Find out more about Macnica Americas products and design services at www.macnica-na.com

The Macnica Americas logo is a trademark of Macnica, Inc. Altera and Cyclone are registered trademarks of Altera Corporation. Other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.