Vehicle computer system with high speed data buffer and serial interconnect

A vehicle computer power system for a vehicle computer system to be mounted in a vehicle, the vehicle having a primary power source, the power system comprising:

• a secondary power source mounted external to the vehicle computer system;
• a power source selector coupled between (1) both the primary and secondary power sources and (2) the vehicle computer system, the power source selector alternately enabling at least one of the primary power source or the secondary power source to supply power to the vehicle computer system;
• the power source selector having a first diode path connected between the primary power source and the vehicle computer system, the first diode path having n diodes;
• and
• the power source selector having a second diode path connected between the secondary power source and the vehicle computer system, the second diode path having at least n+1 diodes.

A vehicle computer system, comprising:

• a housing of a size suitable to be mounted in a vehicle dashboard;
• a logic unit mounted in the housing, the logic unit having an internal multi-bit bus structure and being configured to interface with one or more peripheral devices;
• a processing unit mountable in the housing, the processing unit having an internal multi-bit bus structure separate from the bus structure of the logic unit;
• a data memory operatively coupled to the bus structure of the logic unit to temporarily hold data being communicated between the peripheral devices, the data memory being partitioned into storage areas for corresponding ones of the peripheral devices;
• and
• the logic unit having one or more memory access circuits associated with corresponding ones of the peripheral devices, each memory access circuit designating storage areas of the data memory to hold input data received from, or output data to be sent to, the associated peripheral device.

A vehicle computer system for use in a vehicle, comprising:

• a logic unit;
• a data memory accessible by the logic unit to temporarily hold data being communicated between peripheral devices, the data memory being partitioned into storage areas for corresponding ones of the peripheral devices;
• and
• the logic unit having one or more memory access circuits associated with corresponding ones of the peripheral devices, each memory access circuit designating one storage area of the data memory to hold input data received from the associated peripheral device and another storage area of the data memory to hold output data to be sent to the associated peripheral device.

In a vehicle computer system to be mounted in a vehicle, the vehicle computer system having a processing unit connected to communicate with multiple peripheral devices, a subsystem for processing continuous audio or video data received from a data source comprising:

• a data processor;
• a memory partitioned into pages;
• a first memory access circuit associated with the data source to facilitate data transfer between the memory and the data source, the first memory access circuit being configured to input data received from the data source in a particular memory page;
• and
• a second memory access circuit associated with the data processor to facilitate data transfer between the memory and the data processor, the second memory access circuit being configured to retrieve the data from the particular memory page and to output the data to the data processor.

A vehicle computer system comprising:

• a housing having a base unit and a faceplate;
• a logic unit mounted to the base unit to form a support module, the support module having an interfacing slot and being configured to support multiple peripheral devices;
• the faceplate having at least one electronic component to form a faceplate module, the faceplate module being compatibly connected to the interfacing slot of the support module;
• a high speed serial interface electronically coupling the logic unit to the electronic component on the faceplate module, the high speed serial interface enabling the logic unit to transfer a synchronized serial bit stream to the electronic component, the serial bit stream being organized into multiple frames, individual frames having multiple data bits and at least one valid bit to indicate whether the data bits are valid;
• and
• the support module being configured to facilitate data communication between the peripheral devices, the support module having a data memory to temporarily hold data being communicated between the peripheral devices and one or more memory access circuits associated with corresponding ones of the peripheral devices, each memory access circuit designating at least one storage area within the data memory to hold input data received from, or output data to be sent to, the associated peripheral device.

A vehicle computer system, comprising:

• first and second logic units mountable in a vehicle;
• a clock generator that generates clock pulses;
• a high speed serial interface to electrically interconnect the first and second logic units;
• and
• the first and second logic units being configured to exchange data via the high speed serial interface by sending one synchronizing bit every N clock pulses followed by an N-bit frame comprising N-1 data bits and one valid bit to indicate whether the data bits are valid, wherein N is an integer greater than one.