Today's mobile developers are faced with several interface design challenges, especially when it comes to proprietary technologies. Not only do proprietary interfaces fragment the market, but they increase development cost, package pins/cost, and interoperability testing complexity.
Founded in July 2003 by ARM, Nokia, STMicroelectronics and Texas Instruments, the Mobile Industry Processor Interface (MIPI) Alliance promotes faster and broader adoption of mobile devices by defining and promoting specifications that standardize mobile interfaces. The broad scope of these specifications addresses interfaces to peripherals like cameras and displays, as well as other integrated circuits like modems, co-processors, memory, wireless connectivity, audio, RF and power management devices. There are also standardized test and debug interfaces that support end-equipment software development and optimization.
Membership in this alliance has grown steadily to over 175 companies that span across the mobile ecosystem: End-product OEMs, semiconductor companies, IP vendors, software vendors, peripheral vendors, test labs and test equipment vendors.
Why such interest in the MIPI Alliance?
Standardized interfaces allow engineers to focus on areas where they can really differentiate. By collapsing several proprietary and high pin-count parallel interfaces into fewer serial MIPI interfaces, device area and pin count are reduced to enable other capabilities and technologies. Designed specifically for mobile devices, these interfaces are also optimized for low power, extending battery life or allowing for more functionality with the same battery size.
In the end, everyone wins - developers can shift time from non-differentiating interfaces to develop new, exciting features that consumers can enjoy and fragmentation is reduced for better economy of scale to drive overall cost lower.
TI's commitment
On a whole, TI is committed to enabling innovation in the mobile industry. In that vein, we are committed to the MIPI Alliance-helping to lower the cost of implementing mobile interfaces today and in the future. The alliance provides a lot of value to TI and the entire mobile industry supply chain.
TI serves as a Board Member and active contributor to MIPI specifications. We also ship several mobile products today that support multiple MIPI interfaces, including our OMAPTM applications processors. By staying on the leading edge of these interfaces, we can offer our customers the best capabilities for their innovative products.
In my product line management role at TI, I see the direct benefit of the MIPI specifications on our development costs, along with an increased selection of peripheral devices that can connect to our products. It has been very exciting to see the great success of the MIPI Alliance based on its strong membership growth, wide array of mobile interface specifications, many production devices and end-products deploying MIPI interfaces and its broad, supporting ecosystem.
Opportunity to learn more
If you're interested in learning about the MIPI Alliance, please attend the organization's first open Information Session on June 16 in San Diego. Attendees will get a complete view of the organization, learn about the benefits of membership and see product demonstrations. If you're unable to attend, contact info@mipi.org for more information. You can also check out the MIPI Alliance Twitter page and join the LinkedIn group.
