UniPro

UniPro (or Unified Protocol) is a high-speed interface technology for interconnecting integrated circuits in mobile and mobile-influenced electronics.

The UniPro technology and associated physical layers aim to provide high-speed data communication (gigabits/second), low-power operation (low swing signaling, standby modes), low pin count (serial signaling, multiplexing), small silicon area (small packet sizes), data reliability (differential signaling, error recovery) and robustness (proven networking concepts, including congestion management).

Although other connectivity technologies (SPI, PCIe, USB) exist which also support a wide range of applications, the inter-chip interfaces used in mobile electronics are still diverse which differs significantly from the (in this respect more mature) computer industry.

Its acknowledgements list 19 engineers from 12 companies and organizations: Agilent, Cadence, IEEE-ISTO, Intel, nVidia, Nokia, Qualcomm, Samsung, STMicroelectronics, Synopsys, Texas Instruments and Toshiba.

The architects designing UniPro intended from the start to release the technology as a step-wise roadmap with backward compatibility.

Planned roadmap steps beyond UniPro v1.4x aim to provide specifications for network-capable endpoint and network switch devices.

UniPro and its underlying physical layer were designed to support low power operation needed for battery-operated systems.

These features range from power-efficient high-speed operation to added low-power modes during idle or low bandwidth periods on the network.

Actual power behavior is, however, highly dependent on system design choices and interface implementation.

The Physical Layer (L1) is covered in separate MIPI specifications in order to allow the PHY to be reused by other (less generic) protocols if needed(ref).

This implies a relatively long-term vision about future handset architectures composed of modular subsystems interconnected via stable, standardized, but flexible network interfaces.

Although UniPro is backed by a number of major companies and that the UniPro incubation time is more or less in line with comparable technologies (USB, Internet Protocol, Bluetooth, in-vehicle networks), adoption rate is presumed to be main concern about the technology.

This is especially true because the mobile industry has virtually no track record on hardware standards which pertain to the internals of the product.

There are several implementation of the standard which are expected to hit the market Interoperability requires more than just alignment between the peer UniPro devices on protocol layer L1–L4: it also means aligning on more application-specific data formats, commands and their meaning, and other protocol elements.

This is a known intrinsically unsolvable problem in all design methodologies: you can agree on standard and reusable "plumbing" (lower hardware/software/network layers), but that doesn't automatically get you alignment on the detailed semantics of even a trivial command like ChangeVolume(value) or the format of a media stream.