M31’s new-generation MIPI M-PHY Gear3 IP targets the market of Universal Flash Storage (UFS) with the performance of 5.8Gbps per Lane. Besides its high-bandwidth and low power characteristics, by working with M31’s technology partners, it has passed UFS 2.1 system verifications with a number of UFS controllers such as, embedded UFS memory controller, extrapolated UFS storage memory card controller and external UFS reader controller.

Hsiao-Ping Lin, Chairman and CEO of M31, said: ”In combining the Unipro and UFS controllers from our soft IP partners, M31 M-PHY has been seamlessly integrated as a complete system solution to meet the requirements of the latest UFS 2.1 standards. The integrated solution not only saves customers’ integration time, but also provides a good implementation example of how to manage low power in high-performance operations, which are required by most UFS-based products.”

"28HPC+ is a further enhancement of the very successful 28HPC process,” said Suk Lee, TSMC Senior Director, Design Infrastructure Marketing Division. “With 28HPC+, the same SoC design runs faster based on the same power budget or consumes lower leakage power at the same operating speed. The combination of TSMC’s 28HPC+ process and M31 IP enables customers to realize the benefits of performance and power in developing their cutting-edge products."

M31 has developed the new generation of MIPI M-PHY Gear3 IP in both TSMC 40LP and TSMC 28HPC+ process nodes. The 40LP M-PHY has been widely adopted by customers while the 28HPC+ IP will be formally released in 2016Q4. To further its technology for advanced processes, M31 is developing MIPI M-PHY Gear4 IP with 11.6Gbps per Lane performance in TSMC 28HPC+ and 16FFC processes.

M31 also develops other MIPI PHY including D-PHY v1.2 IP for the connection between video chip to camera module in mobile devices; D-PHY v1.1 IP to meet the low-power needs of IoT applications; and, Combo C/D-PHY supporting C-PHY and D-PHY dual functions in the same PHY interface.

As the connectivity of mobile devices expands into other applications, it’s expected that M31’s MIPI solutions will be designed and populated in various devices such as, wearables, action camera, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV), Internet of Vehicles (IoV), and Virtual Reality (VR) headsets.