Renesas Electronics recently unveiled four new I3C Basic bus extension products for control plane designs across a variety of applications, including data center and server applications, as well as enterprise, factory automation, and communications equipment. The new products include the IMX3102 2:1 bus multiplexer, IMX3112 1:2 bus expander, and IXP3114 and IXP3104 1:4 general-purpose IO expanders, which support up to 12.5MHz speeds as well as integrated thermal sensor capability.

These new products provide maximum design flexibility for engineers implementing I3C Basic as a system management bus in applications where there may be multiple masters, a large number of endpoint devices, and long traces – all of which can impact bus complexity and signal integrity. The integrated thermal sensor allows for better integration of thermal management into the bus design itself and can reduce the number of dedicated thermal sensor endpoints. Next-generation compute architectures are leading the transition to I3C as the system management bus of choice following the JEDEC standard adoption of I3C Basic for the DDR5 memory sideband. The increase in memory subsystem complexity with distributed power management, telemetry and thermal management at the sub-channel level requires higher sideband bus bandwidth.

Furthermore, emerging needs for advanced thermal control loops, security and component authentication, and more robust fault tolerance and recovery are driving similar needs for a high bandwidth interface across the entire server control plane. I3C Basic provides an ideal solution to serve all of these needs. It enables system management architectures to provide granular information about the server resource status during bootup and runtime. This allows system managers to implement effective workload migration and server load balancing to significantly optimize server utilization.

“The complexity of intelligent platform management in modern data center equipment has finally outstripped the capabilities of decades-old interfaces like I2C and SMBus,” said Rami Sethi, Vice President, Data Center Business Division at Renesas. “We are excited to offer an entire lineup of I3C bus extension devices for large-scale, high-speed control plane designs that enable sophisticated capabilities for environmental control, advanced telemetry, security, and fault recovery.”

The IMX3102 2:1 bus multiplexer is well suited for designs where there may be two masters controlling a single peripheral or slave devices. The IMX3112 1:2 bus multiplexer supports designs where a single host is controlling two peripheral or slave devices. The general-purpose IO expanders, IXP3114 (with temperature sensor) and IXP3104 1:4 (no temperature sensor), are designed for a host controller with up to four peripheral or slave devices.

Unexpected motherboard temperature increases can result in costly system failures. Positioning temperature sensors in multiple locations on the motherboard allows engineers to continuously monitor for potential temperature spikes and direct the CPU to take action as needed to prevent a catastrophic event. The new I3C products feature integrated temperature sensors, reducing overall system costs and improving integration.

With the new I3C products, Renesas now offers a complete portfolio of I3C and I2C devices. For additional information visit www.idt.com/memorymux.