Display Product of the Year

Product Name: MXT1296M1T maXTouch® touchscreen controller

Company: Microchip Technology

Entry Statement

The Microchip MXT1296M1T maXTouch® touchscreen controller allows automotive designers to satisfy various and unique aspect ratios for touch displays in cars. This new product includes additional functional safety support requested by OEMs.

The MXT1296M1T can reconfigure its driving and receiving touch channels to match the exact screen format, from 1:1 to 5:1 aspect ratio, including the popular 8:3 automotive aspect ratio. This feature enables the customer to efficiently use the number of touch channels available, without the need to select a larger, more expensive touch controller. Furthermore, customers can save additional development and validation time and resources by reusing a common PCB design to support different touch sensor aspect ratios. The MXT1296M1T is an industry first to enable the sensor channel reconfiguration by parameters. These settings do not require firmware modification, leading to lower design risk and faster time to market.

The MXT1296M1T touchscreen controller offers two communication interfaces operating simultaneously, which allow a bridgeless connection to the back channel of the LVDS video link for touch information and a connection to a local microcontroller (MCU). The bridgeless topology reduces touch latency to improve the user experience.
The MXT1296M1T embeds various functional safety features to constantly check the integrity of the touch controller operation, as well as that of the connected touch sensors. The Failure Modes Effects and Diagnostic Analysis (FMEDA) and functional safety manual, dramatically ease the customer experience to design, build and certify a system for Automotive Safety Integrity Level B (ASIL-B) applications to the ISO 26262 standard.

The MXT1296M1T allows for high resolution transmit waveform control to lower RF emissions and avoid interference with the car radio or RFID systems. With screen sizes increasing in cars, RF emissions generated by the projected capacitive touch technology are growing. Emission limits vary in amplitude, frequency and bandwidth for each major car manufacturer. The MXT1296M1T uses a dedicated on-chip 64-level digital-to-analog converter (DAC) to accurately shape the waveform of the transmitting lines. This allows designers to precisely control the frequency response and optimize the harmonic emissions to meet specific OEM defined limits.