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"  If you simply can&amp;#039;t imagine life on the go without an internet connection, you&amp;#039;re probably keen on the recent news that Audi&amp;#039;s new A3 will be the first vehicle in the U.S. to offer in-car 4G LTE connectivity. The system, which taps into AT&amp;amp;amp;T&amp;#039;s cellular network to power the car&amp;#039;s built-in features like Google Earth, weather forecasting, and fuel price info, will also enable Wi-Fi hotspots with blazing download speeds of up to 100 Mbps-- faster than most home internet connections. But as with all things electronic, the NVIDIA chip that powers the A3&amp;#039;s multimedia system and the Qualcomm chip that handles Audi Connect will some day go the way of the Nintendo 64, only to be replaced by even quicker and more efficient hardware. Anticipating the inevitable antiquating of such systems-- and the resulting need to redesign the hardware architecture that handles those duties, Audi has created its first ever modular system intended to help car design keep pace with ever-evolving cellular and multimedia technology. Audi&amp;#039;s in-house multimedia guru Mathias Halliger says of the so-called MIB housings (seen above) that, &amp;quot;Modularity was the key requirement for the [MMI hardware] design,&amp;quot; adding that his team worked around the clock to make the futureproof system a reality.  The process of designing a car typically follows a slug-like pace compared to the lightning fast evolutions in chipset advances, which leads to inevitable lags between the evolution of sheetmetal and the updating of multimedia systems. Even the NVIDIA Tegra processor in the brand spanking new Audi A3 is two generations behind the company&amp;#039;s most recent chipset unveiled at this year&amp;#039;s Consumer Electronics Show. As cool as the swappable chipset may be, don&amp;#039;t get fooled into thinking the modularity will keep your car&amp;#039;s multimedia system eternally up-to-date: the new MMI platform is intended to make Audi&amp;#039;s future products easily adaptible to emerging chip updates, rather than enabling current owners to endlessly upgrade their existing hardware. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/a10226/audi-mmi/>