June 2 news, Renesas Electronics recently announced that it is the first to launch the RG3MxxB12 series of I3C smart switching devices for next-generation server motherboards and other infrastructure equipment. The new chip greatly improves scalability and reliability, while reducing high performance. The complexity of the system design enables an I3C control plane network with multiple initiator controllers (such as CPUs and baseboard management controllers/BMCs) to support full-speed operation in large physical networks by improving signal integrity and reducing capacitive loading. Target. The new products also support heterogeneous designs by providing IO level translation and protocol translation for mixed I2C/SMBus and I3C networks.

The MIPI I3C bus serves as an extensible control bus interface for connecting peripherals and processors or other management controllers. It has the advantages of high performance, enhanced reliability, extremely low power consumption and low electromagnetic interference (EMI). These features also enable new system capabilities, such as enabling advanced telemetry, failover, sideband safety, component certification, and faster startup times.

Current system designs typically use the traditional I2C protocol and simple field-effect transistor (FET) switches to connect the initiator and target devices on the motherboard. This approach does not scale to I3C speeds, and fundamentally limits system management to the most basic functions. Renesas‘ new I3C smart switch product family allows expansion of two initiator (upstream) ports to four, eight or more target ports at maximum speed with full protocol awareness and compliance. The new Renesas product family also provides seamless transition between I3C and I2C devices, allowing plug-and-play compatibility of legacy devices on the control plane network. This I3C smart switch is the result of close collaboration between Renesas and Intel teams. Starting from conceptual conception, specification definition, and other links before tape-out, it continues to software development, component and system-level verification after tape-out.

Renesas, a global leader in high-performance computing peripherals, its new I3C smart switch product family will be the first choice for Renesas DDR5 I3C expanders, Registered Clock Drivers (RCDs), Power Management ICs (PMICs), Serial Detect (SPDs) Complementary to solutions such as hubs, temperature sensors and data buffers.

It is reported that Renesas I3C smart switch devices are currently available in two versions. One has two upstream ports and four downstream ports, and the other has two upstream ports and eight downstream ports. The new devices are sampling to select users now and are expected to be widely available in the first quarter of 2023.