San Jose, CA. Chip developers across the sensor and mobile ecosystems will be able to take advantage of the emerging MIPI I3C standard, said Ken Foust, chair of the MIPI Alliance Sensor Working Group, in an interview at Sensors Expo. The standard is expected to be formally approved and announced by the MIPI Alliance board later this year.
The two-wire interface will improve upon interfaces like I2C, which the new standard will resemble in the idle state, Foust said, adding that I3C will achieve data rates of 30-Mb/s while maintaining a low gate count.
I3C, he said, solves a need for a convenient chip-to-chip interface that alleviates the challenges of integrating sensors in product designs—especially for IoT, mobile, and automotive applications. With I3C, he said, designers needn’t rely on GPIO for sensor-interface tasks.
Foust noted that Synopsys debuted MIPI I3C IP targeting IoT and automotive applications in April.
Synopsys DesignWare MIPI I3C Controller IP
The Synopsys DesignWare MIPI I3C Controller IP incorporates in-band interrupts within the two-wire interface to deliver low pin count. The IP is compliant with the MIPI Camera Control Interface (CCI), I2C, and MIPI I3C specifications, allowing designers to scale their sensor interface designs. In addition, the controller IP supports master and slave operating modes, enabling systems with several ICs to efficiently connect to all sensors on a single I3C bus.
With the DesignWare MIPI I3C Controller IP, designers can integrate more sensors into a system while simplifying board design and reducing overall cost and power, Synopsys said.
The DesignWare MIPI I3C Controller IP supports all data rates up to 26.7 Mb/s, dynamic address allocation, multi-master operations, and the 32-bit ARM AMBA Advanced Peripheral Bus (APB) slave interface. The standards-based APB interface connects the IP to the rest of the SoC while the bus is connected to the register and direct memory access (DMA) interfaces, enabling easy IP integration. The combination of the DesignWare MIPI I3C Controller IP with Synopsys DesignWare MIPI CSI-2 Controller, D-PHY, verification IP, and IP prototyping kits enables designers to have a complete image sensor interface solution.
“MEMS and sensors are being adopted at an increasing pace,” said Tony Massimini, chief of technology at Semico Research and Consulting Group, in a press release. “Semico Research projects from 2015 to 2020 the CAGR is 20.4% for MEMS and sensors across all markets. Some applications have as many as 10 or more MEMS and sensors and growing. In addition, there are applications with multiple sensor hub controllers and apps processors. Synopsys has been developing its I3C IP since the early stages of I3C development. Semico foresees MIPI I3C adoption for several applications beyond smartphones such as IoT, wearables, automotive, and more.”
“Designers are adding more sensors into systems to deliver sophisticated functionalities such as touch, motion, proximity, and others,” added John Koeter, vice president of marketing for IP and prototyping at Synopsys. “The DesignWare MIPI I3C Controller IP provides a scalable interface solution that enables designers to efficiently integrate required sensor connectivity into their systems, while meeting challenging performance, power, and cost constraints of their target application.”
