Agilent Technologies Inc. has introduced SuperSpeed USB Inter-Chip, or SSIC, and Camera Serial Interface, or CSI-3, support for its U4431A MIPI M-PHY protocol analyzer for next-generation mobile computing applications. This protocol analyzer support gives engineers in R&D and manufacturing deep insight into their MIPI M-PHY-based designs. CSI-3 (Camera Serial Interface) leverages the CSI-2 protocol of the D-PHY physical layer to the higher-performance M-PHY.

SSIC (SuperSpeed USB Inter-Chip) allows USB-enabled functionality to work in M-PHY-based mobile systems. Mobile designers are adding multiple high-speed buses to their designs to manage multiple high-resolution cameras, advanced graphics adapters and on-board memory. These high-speed buses contribute to increasing demand for bandwidth, which has driven the expansion of the M-PHY specification to include four-lane, 6.0-Gbs options. The U4431A offers up to 16 GB of analysis memory on each lane, allowing designers to capture tens of seconds of system traffic, even at these high speeds.

In addition, the Agilent U4431A offers a raw data mode, a feature that lets designers see the time-correlated 8b/10b data that underlies each protocol. Designers can view the data in a waveform or listing format, providing insight into how a packet is formed at the physical layer. The visibility extends throughout the M-PHY protocol stack, allowing error detection from the physical layer to the link and from the transport layers to the high-level application layer.

These views allow engineers to unravel data as it travels throughout the entire transmission process.