Easyi3C is a leading supplier of embedded system tools that simplify the development and debugging of various communication protocols. The company offers a range of products designed to help engineers and developers use I3C/I2C , USB and MIPI, JEDEC, MCTP and other protocols more efficiently.

The I3C protocol is a new serial communication protocol launched by the MIPI Alliance. It is designed to replace the traditional I2C and SPI interfaces, providing higher data throughput and more advanced functions. I3C retains the pin compatibility of I2C and introduces new features such as dynamic addressing and in-band interrupts, solving the problems of insufficient bandwidth, high power consumption, and complex topology of traditional buses. It is a protocol for the next few decades.

 The I3C Specifically, in 2016, the MIPI Alliance officially released the I3C basic standard MIPII3Cv1.0, marking the entry of I3C technology into the commercial stage. From 2016 to now, the release time is very short, and the industry is gradually upgrading, but it is still difficult to find easy-to-use tools that meet the needs of engineers on the market. Easyi3C exist I3C Host Adapter Pro Based on user feedback and to solve engineers' pain points, we have launched I3C Host Adapter Pro+ The new product has made the following major updates: I3C/I2C bus timing test, I3C/I2C bus Filter test, GPIO function, Strong Driver function, and automated test function. In order to help customers become familiar with our products more quickly, we will explain them through a series of articles in our column.

1. Product Design Introduction

In order to solve the above user pain points, we have made unique innovations in product design and designed two I3C/I2C master controllers to be placed in the Adapter at the same time, as shown below:

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Easyi3C Tower I3C Host Adapter Pro+ includes two I3C master controllers. One is the main controller; the other is the debug controller. The two controllers are on the same bus. You can call any API of one of the controllers to send the I3C/I2C protocol. The main controller is designed for normal operation to ensure that the host can complete operations such as reading and writing normally. The debug controller is designed to test specific protocol parameters. You can use the debug controller to set different timing parameters, write data through the debug controller API, and then read back the data through the main controller API for verification. Through this unique and innovative design, the verification process of the timing parameters can be completed through an automated python script, thereby simplifying the verification process, and quickly scanning the upper and lower boundaries of different timing parameters, so that the normal working timing range of the slave chip can be quickly obtained.

The following are some APIs that can be used by Main Controller:

1. Configure API

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2. Read and Write API

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The read/write functions provided by these APIs follow the original I3C/I2C read/write protocol. All data after the address byte is treated as data only. The concept of registers is not introduced in the EasyI3C API. This is to provide more freedom for different uses. Users can use the EasyI3C read/write API and appropriate read/write flags to write register read/write APIs according to their device specifications.

The above are some relatively common operations. The Pro product has been introduced and everyone should be familiar with it. Our introduction is relatively simple. If you want to know more detailed introduction, you can download more complete documents from our official website.

The following focuses on the differences of the new upgrade of Pro+.

3. Debug Controller APIs：

In order to test the different timing parameters and filters of I2C in MIPI protocol, as shown in the following figure:

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I2C Legacy Mode Timing

Our debug controller supports configuration of the following parameters:

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At the same time, based on the latest I3C protocol of MIPI, the following timings are newly added:

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In order to test the above parameters, our debug controller supports the configuration of the following parameters:

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In order to set the above parameters, we provide the following API, which can be set dynamically:

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At the same time, we provide a set of read and write APIs similar to standard read and write for users to use:

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We will introduce the specific detailed usage later. If you want to know more, you can go to the company's official website to download product-related information.

In order to lower the threshold for customers to use our products, the functions tested above can be debugged through our Tower Console GUI. The following describes how to debug in the Tower Console GUI.