SLIMbus

The Serial Low-power Inter-chip Media Bus (SLIMbus) is a standard interface between baseband or application processors and peripheral components in mobile terminals. It was developed within the MIPI Alliance, founded by ARM, Nokia, STMicroelectronics and Texas Instruments.[1] The interface supports many digital audio components simultaneously, and carries multiple digital audio data streams at differing sample rates and bit widths.

SLIMbus is implemented as a synchronous 2-wire, configurable Time Division Multiplexed (TDM) frame structure. It has supporting bus arbitration mechanisms and message structures which permit re-configuring the bus operational characteristics to system application needs at runtime. Physically, the data line (DATA) and the clock line (CLK) interconnect multiple SLIMbus components in a multi-drop bus topology. SLIMbus devices may dynamically “drop off” the bus and “reconnect” to the bus as required by using appropriate protocols outlined in the SLIMbus specification. When used in a mobile terminal or portable product, SLIMbus may replace legacy digital audio interfaces such as PCM, I2S,[2] and SSI (Synchronous Serial Interface for digital audio), as well as some instances of many digital control buses such as I2C,[3] SPI, microWire,[4] UART, or GPIO pins on the digital audio components.

  1. ^ Merritt, Rick (13 February 2006). "Mobile chip interface gets real". EETimes. Retrieved 17 January 2013.
  2. ^ "I2S bus specification" (PDF). Philips Semiconductors. Retrieved 17 January 2013.
  3. ^ "The I2C-Bus Specification" (PDF). Philips Semiconductors. January 2000. Retrieved 17 January 2013.
  4. ^ "AN-452 MICROWIRE Serial Interface" (PDF). Texas Instruments. Retrieved 17 January 2013.