LVDS vs MIPI, what's the difference?

MIPI and LVDS panels are quite different. They are different ways of sending a RGB, DE, Hsync, VSync signal to a panel. Older (lower res) panels would accept these digital signals directly so RGB24 would have 27 signals, and they would toggle at the pixel rate.

LVDS is quite straight forward, and is just parallel data serialised 7:1. The RGB, DE, and syncs go in defined places. It is normally a clock pair, and 3 LVDS pairs for 18bpp, or 4 LVDS pairs for 24bpp, or 5 LVDS pairs for 30bpp. The LVDS clock tends to be ~75MHz max, and data lines tend to top out at 525MHz (7x75M). Because of this some larger res displays use even and odd groups. So a 24bpp 1080P display would likely have 2 clock pairs, and 8 data pairs - so 20 signal lines. Not a great saving over parallel RGB, but better signal integrity and lower emissions

MIPI on the other hand is a lot more complex. It is typlically a clock and 3 data pairs. The data pairs operate at ~1GHz. It has high voltage and low voltage signalling to conserve power. It has a messaging protocol in addition to raw video. This allows the controller to read data from the display (such as what it is). It allows the controller to control things like the gamma curve, colour calibration, adaptive brightness, etc if the panel supports it. It can be more painful getting a MIPI display to go if you don't know the settings to send it (And these are often poorly documented).

LVDS -> Low Voltage Differential Signalling is the actual voltage and impedances on the physical wires. There are different voltage levels even within the MIPI standard, so pay attention to those.

MIPI is the format of the how the various bits are located relative to other bits and signalling and start and stop sequences inside the data stream. In some parts of the Mipi standard there is description tables for register locations (if my memory serves me).

So Mipi is a stream of formatted bits, and LVDS is the signals that push those bits in the real world.

I'd like to clarify some things:

• LVDS standard describes a way to transmit 0s and 1s serially as voltage differences.
• FPD-Link (and OpenLDI) standard describe a way to use LVDS to transmit video data. Becaue FPD-Link is so tightly coupled with LVDS they are used synonymously. So when someone says LVDS they usually mean FPD-Link (even data sheets do this!)
• MIPI-DSI is another standard, which competes with FPD-Link, but uses a different physical layer, different from LVDS but still differential in nature.
• Now you can read Russel Hocken's answer which is actually the correct answer.