SYNC With MyFord Touch: Automotive Infotainment For All

By Anh T. Huynh
published

Automotive infotainment systems are becoming smarter, and more powerful, featuring some of the same hardware as popular smartphones and tablets. It's time to apply our own unique analysis to technology finding its way into the automotive segment.

SYNC: Powered By Freescale's i.MX516

Ford and Microsoft joined forces to release the first iteration of SYNC back in 2007, which enabled mobile phone and digital media player connectivity. It made its way into 2008 model year Fords as a $395 option on the Focus, Fusion, Edge, and more. The first iteration of Ford SYNC was fairly basic, and did not incorporate an LCD display. However, it included Bluetooth phone integration with voice-activated hands-free calling, phone book transfer, text-to-speech, and voice control of your music.

The interior of our 2012 Ford Focus Titanium features SYNC with MyFord Touch and appointed with leather

Ford’s second-generation infotainment system, dubbed SYNC with MyFord Touch, expounds upon the first SYNC system's capabilities, upgrading the Focus' center stack with an eight-inch touch-screen LCD that serves as the main interface for SYNC with MyFord Touch. The system supports complete voice control of all infotainment features, including phone, radio, navigation, and climate control. Voice control is backed up by physical buttons on the center stack and steering wheel for quick access. 

Inside SYNC With MyFord Touch

Ford tapped Freescale Semiconductor for the system-on-chip, or SoC, that powers SYNC with MyFord Touch. At the heart of Ford's implementation you'll find an i.MX51x-series SoC with 512 MB of memory and 2 GB of NAND flash. Ford isn't particularly forthcoming with information about its implementation, but we confirmed that the company is using the i.MX516 (a fairly easy task, since Freescale only has two models in the family intended for automotive use). Interestingly, the i.MX516 packs an HD video processing unit, which SYNC with MyFord Touch does not yet exploit.

Though the Freescale i.MX51x family was released in 2009, it's powerful enough to drive Ford’s touch-screen user interface. The SoC's CPU consists of a single 600 MHz ARM Cortex-A8 core with Advanced SIMD extensions (referred to as NEON). The NEON instruction set helps accelerate media-oriented tasks, such as voice recognition and audio processing, though we're not certain whether SYNC takes advantage of the extensions or not.

The i.MX51 integrates Qualcomm's Adreno 200 graphics, formerly known as AMD Imageon Z430, with support for the OpenGL ES 2.0 and OpenVG 1.1 standards, Direct3D Mobile, and Direct Draw. Although we can't install benchmarks to the infotainment system itself, we were able to pull out an old HTC Incredible with CyanogenMod 7 on it to get a better idea of how well Adreno 200 performs in GLBenchmark. Scores from our tablet testing is included for comparison.

Although it's not as powerful as Nvidia's Tegra 3 or the latest multi-core PowerVR SGX-based design, Qualcomm's Adreno 200 doesn't need to handle ultra-high resolutions or 3D gaming. Instead, it's fast enough to render 3D maps, which is really all it's used for, since the rest of the UI relies on OpenVG 2D acceleration.

Anh T. Huynh
48 Comments Comment from the forums
  • jhansonxi
    SYNC is the reason that Ford's . I've also met several people who have SYNC and they've all had problems with it freezing completely or controls getting stuck. These problems either require them to stop and turn off the engine (a reboot) or take the car to a dealer to get SYNC reset.

    This is shockingly bad code quality for an embedded system. I may get a Ford vehicle in the future but it won't have SYNC in it. I'll epoxy a tablet to the dash if I need entertainment that bad.
    Reply
  • jhansonxi
    SYNC is the reason that Ford's quality has dropped:
    http://money.cnn.com/2011/06/22/autos/ford_jd_power_initial_quality/index.htm

    P.S. What's up with the broken URL parsing?
    Reply
  • mayankleoboy1
    boot benchmarks for a car :O
    What is the world coming to?
    Reply
  • SteelCity1981
    never had a problem with my SYNC in my ford.
    Reply
  • TheZander
    Drove a brand new rental Ford with all the Sync options. It was nice to be able to play music straight from my phone without taking it out of my pocket or plugging anything in. It was also nice when a call came in and a simple button push switched seamlessly from my music to the call, with good voice quality I might add. The information provided is useful and placed in areas with a focus on keeping your eyes in safer directions than some layouts, and the steering wheel button placement makes sense and also works well (for the most part) once you get used to it.

    However, there are little things here and there that show the system has tremendous potential, but lacks polish you expect when it's in your automobile. I own a reasonably new Ford (2006 Freestyle.) It's been an exceptional, sturdy, and reliable car for several years now with no mechanical issues to date. My dad owns an old Lincoln Navigator with over 370,000 miles on it, still with the original engine running. Fords have been pretty good to me and my family over the years. You put in the key, turn it, and the thing runs. You push the buttons on the door and the windows go up or down. Flip a switch and the heater comes on.

    You expect your automobiles to be like this. Ford Sync does not yet feel like this. "Do I push this button this way or that way?" "What word order do I need to use for this command?" "Why do I have to re-command Sync to start playing my phone's music via bluetooth every time I start my car rather than it just start automatically?" "Why does the system hang once in a while for no apparent reason?"

    It just doesn't yet feel like it's reliable and responsive. I was intrigued and impressed by Sync, but it needs more polish, fluidity, refinement, and most of all consistency and reliability for it to please the masses day after day, and THIS is why Sync is the single worst factor in Ford's otherwise good reliability ratings being lowered, as mentioned above.
    Reply
  • danwat1234
    I like my 1999 Honda Civic. Bullet proof reliable with 226K miles, simple and fast around corners (with an upgraded rear sway bar and good all season tires). It came with AM/FM radio and that's it. I have an FM transmitter to run anything else. All of this fancy technology ... my gaming laptop and my basic 10-key cell phone is enough. But it's great that this tech is available in inexpensive cars.
    I don't think that anybody would buy a new car just for this technology, at least I hope not. But new cars also come with stability, traction, ABS, EBD and panic brake help which is nice.
    My next car will be electric, maybe a 3-wheeled Zaptera. That's a reason to upgrade!
    Reply
  • tuanies
    9532860 said:
    SYNC is the reason that Ford's quality has dropped:
    http://money.cnn.com/2011/06/22/autos/ford_jd_power_initial_quality/index.htm

    P.S. What's up with the broken URL parsing?

    We touch on that in the conclusion. V2.0 of the software fixed a lot of the crashes and issues. We did not experience any crashes during the week we had the car.
    Reply
  • tuanies
    9532864 said:
    I like my 1999 Honda Civic. Bullet proof reliable with 226K miles, simple and fast around corners (with an upgraded rear sway bar and good all season tires). It came with AM/FM radio and that's it. I have an FM transmitter to run anything else. All of this fancy technology ... my gaming laptop and my basic 10-key cell phone is enough. But it's great that this tech is available in inexpensive cars.
    I don't think that anybody would buy a new car just for this technology, at least I hope not. But new cars also come with stability, traction, ABS, EBD and panic brake help which is nice.
    My next car will be electric, maybe a 3-wheeled Zaptera. That's a reason to upgrade!

    That sounds fancy, my daily is a '90 Miata with no power steering, manual windows, no side door guard beams and a first generation airbag. Its a ton of fun though.
    Reply
  • s3anister
    This is cool tech but I wish ford would have started doing this a year or two earlier than they did. I'd love to see an HDMI input instead of composite in and a higher-res screen for example.
    Reply
  • tuanies
    9532867 said:
    This is cool tech but I wish ford would have started doing this a year or two earlier than they did. I'd love to see an HDMI input instead of composite in and a higher-res screen for example.

    HDMI input would be nice. I think Honda is the only one that has HDMI input on the Honda Odyssey, but only on the $45k Elite model.
    Reply