Version 0.90.00 8-Oct-2007 MIPI Alliance Specification for D-PHY
Copyright © 2007 MIPI Alliance, Inc. All rights reserved.
MIPI Alliance Member Confidential.
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MIPI Alliance Specification for D-PHY 278
1 Overview 279
This specification provides a flexible, low-cost, High-Speed serial interface solution for communication 280
interconnection between components inside a mobile device. Traditionally, these interfaces are CMOS 281
parallel busses at low bit rates with slow edges for EMI reasons. The D-PHY solution enables significant 282
extension of the interface bandwidth for more advanced applications. The D-PHY solution can be realized 283
with very low power consumption. 284
1.1 Scope 285
The scope of this document is to specify the lowest layers of High-Speed source-synchronous interfaces to 286
be applied by MIPI Alliance application or protocol level specifications. This includes the physical 287
interface, electrical interface, low-level timing and the PHY-level protocol. These functional areas taken 288
together are known as D-PHY. 289
The D-PHY specification shall always be used in combination with a higher layer MIPI specification that 290
references this specification. Initially, this specification will be used for the connection of a host processor 291
to display and camera modules as used in mobile devices. However, this specification can also be 292
referenced by other upcoming MIPI Alliance specifications. 293
The following topics are outside the scope of this document: 294
• Explicit specification of signals of the clock generator unit. Of course, the D-PHY 295
specification does implicitly require some minimum performance from the clock signals. 296
Intentionally, only the behavior on the interface pins is constrained. Therefore, the clock 297
generation unit is excluded from this specification, and will be a separate functional unit that 298
provides the required clock signals to the D-PHY in order to meet the specification. This allows 299
all kinds of implementation trade-offs as long as these do not violate this specification. More 300
information can be found in section 4. 301
• Test modes, patterns, and configurations. Obviously testability is very im
portant, but because 302
the items to test are mostly application specific or implementation related, the specification of 303
tests is deferred to either the higher layer specifications or the product specification. Furthermore 304
MIPI D-PHY compliance testing is not included in this specification. 305
• Procedure to resolve contention situations. The D-PHY contains several mechanisms to detect 306
Link contention. However, certain contention situations can only be detected at higher levels and 307
are therefore not included in this specification. 308
• Ensure proper operation of a connection between different Lane Module types. There are 309
several different Lane Module types to optimally support the different functional requirements of 310
several applications. This means that next to some base-functionality there are optional features 311
which can be included or excluded. This specification only ensures correct operation for a 312
connection between matched Lane Modules types, which means: Modules that support the same 313
features and have complementary functionality. In case the two sides of the Lane are not the same 314
type, and these are supposed to work correctly, it shall be ensured by the manufacturer(s) of the 315
Lane Module(s) that the provided additional functionality does not corrupt operation. This can be 316
easiest accomplished if the additional functionality can be disabled by other means independent of 317
the MIPI D-PHY interface, such that the Lane Modules behave as if they were the same type. 318
• ESD protection level of the IO. The required level will depend on a particular application 319
environment and product type. 320