MIPI Alliance Releases Specifications to Streamline Integration of In-Vehicle Displays, Add Functional Safety to Display Data Streams

By Tiera Oliver

Associate Editor

Embedded Computing Design

May 04, 2021

News

MIPI Alliance Releases Specifications to Streamline Integration of In-Vehicle Displays, Add Functional Safety to Display Data Streams

The MIPI Alliance announced the completion of its MIPI Automotive SerDes Solutions (MASS) "display stack." 

The MIPI Automotive SerDes Solutions is a set of interface specifications designed to streamline display integration and support the growing bandwidth and functional safety demands required by high-performance displays used in next-generation vehicles.

 The new specifications build upon MIPI A-PHY, the first industry-standard, high-performance, highly reliable, asymmetric SerDes interface. As well as display protocols MIPI Display Serial Interface 2 (MIPI DSI-2) and VESA Embedded DisplayPort and DisplayPort (VESA eDP/DP), to create long-reach source-to-sink connectivity between automotive displays and their associated electronic control units (ECUs).

 The new specifications that complete the display stack are:

  • MIPI Protocol Adaptation Layers (PALs) for MIPI DSI-2 and VESA eDP/DP, to allow display components based on these protocols to map their video, audio and control data to A-PHY’s A-Packet format for transmission over long-reach MIPI A-PHY networks
  • MIPI Display Service Extensions (DSE) v1.0, providing functional safety enablers and support for High-Bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP)
  • MIPI Display Command Set (DCS) v1.5, an update to the standard command set for MIPI DSI-2

The completion of the display stack is a step in the creation of the MASS framework. The framework is designed to provide a standardized, reliable, long-reach connectivity framework for automotive image sensor and display integration with built-in functional safety and security enablers. For displays, it supports point-to-point and daisy-chained topologies, as well as heterogeneous displays, and its use cases include lane-keep assist displays, "virtual" side-view mirror and backup camera displays, as well as co-pilot infotainment displays and others.  

MIPI DSE v1.0 standardizes functional safety enablers within display solutions to help designs meet ISO 26262 requirements from ASIL B to ASIL D. These enablers include link failure detection, timeout monitoring, cyclic redundancy check (CRC) to detect data transmission failures, and a message counter for replay protection. HDCP is also enabled by DSE v1.0, and additional security features will be added through future DSE releases and upcoming MIPI security specifications.

A new version of MIPI DSI-2, v2.0, with updates to include video-to-command mode transition, adaptive refresh panel, and the latest VESA Display Stream Compression (DSC) and Display Compression-M (VDC-M) codecs, is scheduled for release midyear 2021. 

The MIPI Display Working Group will offer a webinar, "Enabling Automotive Displays Using MIPI Automotive SerDes Solutions," on May 19 at 8 a.m. PDT to provide more information about the new specifications. To register, please visit: https://bit.ly/3gQkOsN

A recently published MIPI white paper also explores trends in automotive displays and shares a recent study that validated the ability of the VDC-M codec in MIPI DSI-2 to provide visually lossless compression for automotive images. A MIPI webinar on May 26 will focus on the use of compression in DSI-2 for all application areas. 

For more information, visit: https://www.mipi.org/

Tiera Oliver, Associate Editor for Embedded Computing Design, is responsible for web content edits, product news, and constructing stories. She also assists with newsletter updates as well as contributing and editing content for ECD podcasts and the ECD YouTube channel. Before working at ECD, Tiera graduated from Northern Arizona University where she received her B.S. in journalism and political science and worked as a news reporter for the university’s student led newspaper, The Lumberjack.

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