Gigabit Multimedia Serial Link

An automotive-grade serial link that powers a camera and carries high-speed image data over a single coaxial cable.

GMSL is an automotive serial transmission technology introduced by Maxim in 2008, now owned by Analog Devices (ADI) since it acquired Maxim in 2021. A serializer at the camera end packs image data and sends it over a single coaxial cable or shielded twisted pair to a deserializer at the host end, which converts it to MIPI CSI-2 for the processor; the same cable also carries power and bidirectional control signals, over cable runs of up to 15 meters. GMSL2 offers 6 Gb/s of bandwidth, and GMSL3 offers 12 Gb/s. USB cameras have short cable runs, connectors that come loose easily, and poor noise immunity; GMSL comes out of automotive driver-assistance systems, with good electromagnetic interference resistance, and multiple camera streams can be combined into the same deserializer — which is why multi-camera setups in autonomous driving as well as humanoid and mobile robots commonly use it to connect cameras to a controller like a Jetson.

ExampleOn a Jetson AGX Orin, multiple GMSL cameras connect through a deserializer into the same CSI port, distinguished by virtual channels; NVIDIA’s documentation states the AGX Orin series supports up to 16 virtual channels when using the ISP.

Also called

GMSL, GMSL2, GMSL3

Related

MIPI CSI-2 · NVIDIA Jetson · Multi-Sensor Time Synchronization · CMOS Image Sensor · Autonomous Driving · RGB Camera

Sources

Wikipedia: Gigabit Multimedia Serial Link
NVIDIA Jetson 开发者指南：Jetson Virtual Channel with GMSL Camera Framework (Chinese)

As of

2024