Last July, Microsoft announced a long-term strategic partnership with Fiat Auto to develop an entry-level, low-cost telematics solution for all of Fiat Auto's Fiat, Lancia, and Alfa Romeo brands. The hardware for the project will be built by Magneti Marelli, Fiat Group's automotive components arm.

Platform hardware ecosytem

Samsung's S3C2440 system-on-chip application processor will form the foundation of navigation and "infotainment" platform hardware. The chip is based on a 400MHz ARM920T CPU core and packs an extensive set of on-chip functions including USB, IIC, IIS, LCD display controller, and memory controllers.

The Samsung apps processor is supported by a Xilinx Spartan-3 FPGA, which implements a pair of serial ports along with volume control, noise suppression filter, echo cancellation, decimeter, and scaler functions. Because the FGPA is field-programmable, updates can be made to the hardware even after deployment, a critical feature in light of the 10-year life spans of cars.

SiRF is contributing its SiRFstarIIt GPS chipset to the effort, which, the company says, enables GPS functionality to be added to the system with extremely minimal additional cost in components and board space thanks to its sharing of the host system's processor and memory resources. SiRF's chipset sends raw GPS data to the apps processor which is running the company's SiRFNav program in parallel with other software tasks.

The platform's telecommunications module comes from Siemens. Siemens specifically developed the AC45 module, which includes with an SIM Access Profile (SAP), for the automotive market. The module enables wireless access to information on a mobile phone's SIM card via Bluetooth. Siemens supports the AC45 with a Radio Information Layer (RIL) driver that is compatible with Microsoft's Windows CE based software platforms.

Because most of the system's features will be controlled by speech commands, ScanSoft was chosen to integrate a highly accurate and reliable speech system that supports multiple languages. ScanSoft used its VoCon 3200 automotive voice recognition package and RealSpeak, said to be the most natural sounding text-to-speech synthesis engine. Users will be able to make calls and access contacts and other information stored on a Pocket PC or mobile phone in a hands-free manner, using the car's audio system -- all by just speaking.

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