MIPI Alliance Hosts First Plugfest for Companies Adopting MIPI I3C Sensor Interface Specification

Interoperability Testing Event Marks Important Step toward Commercialization of MIPI I3C Designs for Smartphones, IoT, Automotive and Other Applications

PISCATAWAY, N.J., April 27, 2017 - The MIPI^® Alliance, an international organization that develops interface specifications for mobile and mobile-influenced industries, today announced the successful completion of its first MIPI I3C^SM Plugfest interoperability event.

The plugfest, held March 27-28 in Barcelona, Spain, in conjunction with the MIPI Alliance Member Meeting, provided the first opportunity for early adopters of the new MIPI I3C sensor interface to perform interoperability testing of their designs for smartphones, IoT, automotive and other applications. The event drew participants from semiconductor, IP and test equipment firms, demonstrating industry commitment to MIPI I3C and paving the way for commercialization of products and devices based on the specification. It highlighted the importance of interoperability testing early in the design cycle to ensure seamless functionality between devices and speed up time to market.

“Plugfests are an essential step in the product development process because the testing and debugging activities take place in real-world system integration environments, helping companies ensure interoperability of their components, improve product quality, speed the development process and optimize the manufacturability of their designs,” said Ken Foust, chair of the MIPI Alliance Sensor Working Group.

“Participants found it extremely valuable to share lessons learned about the use and implementation of MIPI I3C,” Foust added. “We strongly encourage member companies to take part in these activities and look forward to offering more plugfests later this year.”

Companies tested four master devices and six slave devices during the event. Participating companies include: BitifEye Digital Test Solutions GmbH, Intel Corporation, Kionix, Inc., A ROHM Group Company, Lattice Semiconductor Corp., NXP Semiconductors, Qualcomm Incorporated, Silvaco, Inc., STMicroelectronics, Synopsys, Inc. and Tektronix, Inc.

Join MIPI Alliance at Upcoming Events

MIPI Alliance plans to offer additional plugfest opportunities later this year in conjunction with member meetings in Atlanta, Ga., USA and Bangalore, India. Please visit http://bit.ly/2p0Sf0F for future plugfest updates and information.

Developers can learn more about MIPI I3C at the Internet of Things Developers Conference April 26-27 in Santa Clara, Calif. MIPI Alliance is a sponsor of the event, and member companies will be onsite to offer table-top demos of product implementations based on MIPI I3C and other MIPI Alliance specifications. Ken Foust will deliver a presentation on April 27 at 9:30 a.m. PDT: “A Developer’s Guide to MIPI I3C Implementation.”

To discover more about MIPI Alliance and to connect with its social networks, follow its Twitter page and join its LinkedIn group. To join MIPI Alliance, use the Join MIPI link on the organization’s site.

Quotes from MIPI I3C Plugfest Participants

BitifEye Digital Test Solutions GmbH

“BitifEye provides solutions for physical layer tests. MIPI I3C is an opportunity to enhance our long-lasting engagement within MIPI Alliance,” said Sascha Kirch, hardware and software engineer, BitifEye Digital Test Solutions GmbH. “The plugfest was a valuable event to test our technology’s performance with potential customer products. MIPI I3C performs well and is fairly straightforward to work with. If you’ve already been working with I²C, MIPI I3C feels more like an update. From our point of view, we see plenty of applications for this “low-speed” interface within the industry.”

Kionix, Inc., A ROHM Group Company

“We make MEMS sensors. The MIPI I3C Plugfest has given us our first opportunity to test future generations of our technologies in the real world and the event has been extremely valuable from Day 1,” said Alex Chernyakov, applications engineer, Kionix. “We tested our products with devices from three other companies. The experience was beneficial to all of us, whether we discovered bugs, confirmed that our implementations were correct, or validated our device’s ability to interoperate with others.”

Lattice Semiconductor Corp.

“Lattice has been providing production-ready MIPI interface solutions for the mobile industry with our low cost, low power and small form factor FPGAs,” said Satwant Singh, senior director of strategic planning, Lattice Semiconductor. “With significant improvements over the popular I²C interface, the MIPI I3C specification is expected to become an important interface for mobile and mobile-influenced applications. MIPI I3C Plugfest provided Lattice with an early opportunity to actively work with the MIPI Alliance and its member companies to evaluate our implementation and ensure interoperability.”

NXP Semiconductors

“NXP has been very committed to MIPI I3C, and it was great to finally see it in action,” said Paul Kimelman, platform architecture, NXP Semiconductors. “NXP was able to bring both master and slave devices (on FPGA), and we were very pleased with excellent results that give us good confidence across a wide range of I3C features. These plugfests are extremely valuable for each company and the industry because good interoperability will help speed adoption and ensure I3C is available on a wide range of silicon parts much more quickly than is typical. Having the test equipment vendors present was great for everyone as it will ensure early access to a range of test logic analyzers and scopes which are already I3C aware.”

Qualcomm Incorporated

“Qualcomm has a lot of experience with MIPI specifications and we brought several engineers to this event,” said Paul Yaroshenko, senior software engineer, Qualcomm Incorporated. “Including concurrently connecting two different vendor slaves on the same bus to our master implementation, we were able to get input from multiple stakeholders on issues we’ve discovered, such as calibration challenges, and we were able to overcome the issues while we were here. That’s what plugfests are for!”

Silvaco, Inc.

“I3C is one of the most important standards to come to market in a long time and we expect it to be ubiquitous in mobile handsets and a plethora of IoT devices,” said Warren Savage, general manager of the IP Division, Silvaco, Inc. “These plugfests allow industry leaders to work together to ensure the interoperability of our products in the market and allow rapid adoption of new technology with minimum risk to our customers.”

STMicroelectronics

“MIPI I3C is very important to ST. We helped launch MIPI at the beginning and have continued to contribute in the development of the specification as an active member of the MIPI Sensor Working Group,” said Eugenio Miluzzi, ASIC design & verification engineer, STMicroelectronics. “The technology will clearly add value in all of our sensors.”

Synopsys, Inc.

“Participating in the MIPI Plugfest enabled us to do extensive testing of our DesignWare^® I3C Master and Slave IP to help ensure interoperability and compliance to the latest specification,” said John Koeter, vice president of marketing for IP, Synopsys. “As an active member of the Sensor Working Group and MIPI Board of Directors, Synopsys drove early developments and adoption of the MIPI I3C interface. Our I3C IP enables designers to incorporate high-performance sensor connectivity on a single I3C bus into SoCs for mobile, IoT and automotive applications.”

Tektronix, Inc.

“We had announced an I3C protocol solution in November 2016 and this event has given us the opportunity to validate multiple devices using Tektronix’s I3C Protocol solution,” said John Marrinan, field application engineering team lead, Tektronix, Inc. “It was good to see so many I3C devices and hosts already available which shows that MIPI I3C will be widely adopted in the automotive and mobile segments. It was a great learning experience as well from different customers on how they would like to debug the I3C bus. Tektronix will continue to enhance its I3C solution to reduce debug time for customers. We were able to use our time at the plugfest to observe the interactions between devices and help debug systems. MIPI I3C is a very flexible protocol, but flexibility does add complexity to an implementation, which underscores the importance of debug solutions. Tektronix is actively working with MIPI Alliance on I3C Conformance Test Specification development.”

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About MIPI Alliance

MIPI Alliance (MIPI) develops interface specifications for mobile and mobile-influenced industries. There is at least one MIPI specification in every smartphone manufactured today. Founded in 2003, the organization has nearly 300 member companies worldwide and 13 active working groups delivering specifications within the mobile ecosystem. Members of the organization include handset manufacturers, device OEMs, software providers, semiconductor companies, application processor developers, IP tool providers, test and test equipment companies, as well as camera, tablet and laptop manufacturers. For more information, please visit www.mipi.org.