Project Peacock

Project Peacock will be (in theory) a chipset for doing DVI/VGA display output from a microcontroller. It will consist of:

• Display Controller MCU
  • Communicate with host via I2C/SPI/RS232
• Display Driver CPLD
  • Essentially just the digital part of a RAMDAC, constantly reads data from the RAM and spits it out to the output converter
  • Using a CPLD means the Display Controller MCU doesn't need to be super-fast
• RAM
  • SRAM
    • Far too expensive (~$200) for the amount needed
  • PSRAM (Pseudo SRAM)/CellularRAM
    • SRAM interface but DRAM backend, simple to interface with and cheap (~$6)
    • Only available in VFBGA package meaning a four-layer board would be required, and hard to solder
  • SDRAM
    • Inexpensive (~$5) and readily available
    • Easy non-BGA SMT packages
    • Harder to interface with, would need to have the CPLD handle RAM refreshing and other housekeeping
• Output converter
  • TMDS converter for DVI
  • DAC for VGA