If you want to use a display or camera with an FPGA, you will often end up with a MIPI-based solution. As of the Xilinx Vivado 2020.1 release, the MIPI DSI (display serial interface) and CSI (camera serial interface) IP blocks are now bundled with the IDE to be used freely with Xilinx FPGAs.

The Xilinx MIPI CSI2 receiver block implements the CSI-2 v1.1 specification, which although a bit older is essentially the same CSI implementation as on the Raspberry Pi boards. This means that it would allow one to use this IP block on an FPGA with many common CSI camera modules out there. The IP block offers a standard AXI4 interface for connecting up to the rest of a design.

Similarly, the Xilinx MIPI DSI transmitter block implements DSI v1.3 specification. This offers a maximum data rate of 1.5 Gbps, with an AXI4-lite interface to communicate with the rest of the design. Both IP blocks are subject to the Core license agreement, which doesn’t appear to preclude it from being used in a specific fashion, whether commercial or personal.

This is not the only way to use MIPI devices with an FPGA, of course. Take for example [Daveshah]’s CSRIx project on Github.

Header image: Kwapix / CC BY-SA 4.0