MIPI, which stands for Mobile Industry Processor Interface, was originally conceived as a low-power interface intended to interconnect functional units (e.g., camera sensors and displays) within handsets. The popularity of MIPI has mushroomed in recent years -- many PCB circuit board component suppliers have adopted the standard and debuted a variety of MIPI-enabled devices, including camera sensors, displays, and application processors. Although a strong interest to tap into the mobile market is the primary reason for such a move, the MIPI trend has caught the attention of designers building systems for non-mobile markets, such as automotive, industrial, and medical. The rationale for this is that MIPI-enabled products are intended for high-volume mobile markets and so they are bound to be cheaper.
This has led to an interesting PCB circuit board dilemma. Since MIPI as an interface was never intended to serve non-mobile applications, interfacing to FPGAs was never made a priority. This makes perfect sense, since the majority of FPGAs are not well-suited for use in high-volume mobile devices. On the other hand, FPGAs are quite common in medical, industrial, and automotive applications. The end result is that the lure of using low-cost MIPI-enabled devices and the need to connect them to FPGAs has forced designers to look for PCB circuit board bridging solutions.
