Earlier this year, the UCIe™ (Universal Chiplet Interconnect Express™) Consortium established a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the MIPI Alliance allowing both organizations to collaborate on an initiative to develop and deliver a new specification that will support a common debug approach over UCIe.
While sharing similar goals, the two organizations also each represent distinct but complementary skill sets and expertise. This collaboration allows each organization to focus on what it does best: UCIe for the overall transport and functional aspects, and MIPI for its debug know-how.
Founded in 2003, the MIPI Alliance is comprised of more than 375 member companies spanning the mobile and mobile-influenced ecosystems and provides the hardware and software interfaces that device vendors need to create state-of-the-art, innovative devices while accelerating time-to-market and reducing costs.
The UCIe Consortium was formed in 2022 to establish a die-to-die interconnect standard and foster an open chiplet ecosystem. The organization, representing a diverse ecosystem of market segments, addresses customer requests by developing a comprehensive solution stack and encouraging interoperability between chiplet solutions.
The MIPI Alliance has a long tradition of working with industry and standards development bodies to support specification development activities and various initiatives.
MIPI has already defined debug protocols over I3C, USB and Internet Protocol Sockets (TCP and UDP) and is working on defining a specification for debug over PCIe. We recognized there is a natural fit for the MIPI debug architecture to define a protocol over UCIe and ensure commonality across multiple standards for better interoperability and faster time to market.
Under the MOU, UCIe implementers can use what they need from the MIPI “Debug Over” specifications, mixing and matching them with their own implementation-defined protocols and debug infrastructures.
This layered approach will provide UCIe implementers with the scalability and flexibility essential to scale debug infrastructure to the chiplet size and achieve optimal design solutions. Additionally, utilizing and extending the UCIe Manageability Baseline and UCIe DFx Architectures will allow developers to layer UCIe into the MIPI debug architecture.
Ultimately, the decision to establish a MoU between UCIe and MIPI was reinforced by the range of synergies the two orgs share:
Both organizations are aligned on the importance of supporting only one “Debug Over UCIe” specification, which will create a stronger, more consistent ecosystem of hardware IP, tooling and debug software to drive down development costs.
Both agree to reuse MIPI debug architectural elements and extend the UCIe Manageability Baseline and UCIe DFx Architectures.
Both actively participating and collaborating in this initiative, which we believe will allow the rapid delivery of the new specification.
UCIe Consortium members interested in learning more about this exciting partnership and the MIPI Alliance should visit www.mipi.org. The MIPI Debug Working Group is actively seeking input from UCIe adopters and implementers on their experiences and requirements for MIPI “Debug Over” specifications. To learn more about its work, visit the MIPI Debug Working Group page on the MIPI website. And stay tuned for updates from the UCIe Consortium about this latest advancement!