Join MIPI
Join MIPI

Debug

Working Group

MIPI | Debug
Status: ACTIVE

Charter

Industry Need

Accomplishments

Focus

About the Group

Chair 
Enrico Carrieri, Intel Corporation

Vice Chair
Jason Peck, Texas Instruments Incorporated.

Participation
MIPI Alliance members at the Contributor level and above may participate by subscribing to the group on the member website.

Details

Charter

The MIPI Debug Working Group, originally named the Debug & Test Working Group, began as an investigation group in 2003. In 2005 it was chartered to enable the best system debug support in all stages of device development to benefit manufacturers and users.

The group’s charter directs it to develop hardware and software interface and protocol specifications that are low-cost and interoperable, and interact with or support system debug procedures. The specifications leverage functional interfaces where possible to increase applicability of the tools in systems that are deployed in the field. The group works with other MIPI Alliance groups, as well as other industry organizations, as necessary to pursue its work.

Industry Need

MIPI Alliance formed the group in response to the industry’s dependence on non-standard, proprietary debug solutions that increased the complexity of the debug process, increased development costs, and delayed time to market for vendors. Prior to progressively developing Debug's layered series of specifications, the industry had also struggled with the following challenges:

  • a need for interoperability between tooling and devices that are being debugged
  • the increasing functional complexity of mobile and mobile-influenced devices
  • the inability of available debug standards to address these issues
  • the limited ability of many physical form factors to facilitate access to debug interfaces
  • a lack of cost-effective dedicated debug/trace interfaces.

Accomplishments

The working group has developed the MIPI Gigabit Debug portfolio of solutions, which facilitate robust debugging of form factor devices in the lab and again after they are connected directly via USB, or on a standard network via wired or wireless IP-based connections. The solutions can be used to debug, troubleshoot or fine-tune devices targeted to augmented reality/virtual reality, wearables, the industrial IoT, automotive infotainment, and advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), among others. 

The group is very active, continually advancing its debug solutions. The portfolio includes a platform-independent trace protocol with an accompanying software instrumentation library, an updated Gigabit Debug specification around the use of USB Type-CTM as a debug interface, and a specification that provides for the discovery of debug technologies by software and tooling. In 2020, the group also released MIPI Debug for I3C. 

Focus

The MIPI Debug Working Group addresses debug challenges for both mobile devices and mobile-influenced devices. It aims to define and unify debug solutions for mating connections, pin assignment, and electrical characteristics; reuse debug functional interfaces and protocols; and develop debug/trace protocols and associated software layers for highly integrated systems that are deployed in the field. It supports legacy interfaces and protocols wherever possible.

For more information, view the MIPI white paper, "Architecture Overview for Debug" and supporting document, "MIPI Alliance Recommendation for Debug and Trace Connectors."