The MIPI Alliance Board of Directors established the System Power Management (SPM) investigation group in 2004, and it became a full working group in 2005. The SPM Working Group focuses on hardware and software power management interfaces in mobile devices.

The System Power Management Interface (SPMI) is a high-speed, low-latency serial interface suitable for real-time control of modern voltage and frequency scaled multi-core application processors and its power management and auxiliary components.

In the software domain, the System Power Management Architecture Framework white paper discusses software power management interfaces and constructs to effectively manage the power state of complex heterogeneous processors, systems and modules. The white paper describes these interfaces and their use within the context of a typical system.

The SPMI specification defines a two-wire serial interface optimized for real-time power management such as frequency and voltage scaling between the application processor and its peripheral components, especially the power management IC. The SPMI specification potentially replaces a number of legacy interfaces and provides low pin count high speed control interface for up to 20 connected devices.

The System Power Management Architecture Framework document is not a standard but a white paper that discusses how to effectively construct hierarchical power management solution for a modern multi-domain heterogeneous mobile device with multiple processor cores, HW accelerators and other HW and SW resources.
 

Currently the working group is inactive with all its tasks completed.

History and Roadmap

Working Group Chair

Gordon Mortensen, National Semiconductor

Working Group Vice-Chair

Olivier Alavoine, Texas Instruments

Member companies represented:

ARM, Broadcom, Freescale, Infineon, Intel, Matsushita Electric Industrial (Panasonic), Motorola, National Semiconductor, Nokia, Philips Semiconductor, Renesas, ST Microelectronics, Texas Instruments, Samsung Semiconductor