Cypress brings USB 3.0 to mobile handhelds

Cypress Semiconductor Corp. has started to sample what it claims is the first USB 3.0 (SuperSpeed USB) product specifically built to improve the performance of mobile handhelds.

Marketed under the brand name West Bridge Benicia, the CYWB0263 peripheral controller is a highly optimized Data transfer Offload Engine (DtOE) that enables mobile devices to double the IOPS (Input/output Operations Per Second) throughput, stream high-definition video, "sideload" multimedia content at up to 200 MB per second, and reduce battery charging time by 50 percent with increased charging currents up to 900mA, according to Cypress.

The technology improves the performance of a device during boot, page loading, switching between apps and other tasks that require frequent memory access.  It employs the second generation of Cypress’s Simultaneous Link to Independent Multimedia (SLIM II) architecture, which manages multiple, non-blocking paths between peripherals, memory and the processor to allow maximum data throughput.

This new generation West Bridge controller supports the latest mass storage standards such as SD 3.0 (SDXC with UHS-I) and e-MMC4.4x, enabling faster data access and greater storage capacity. It also provides Cypress’s new EZ-Dtect feature, which provides charger and accessory detection without the need for any external power management device.

Cypress also introduced a new USB OTG and USB 2.0 solution for mobile devices – the West Bridge Bay controller. West Bridge Bay offers the same benefits as Benicia — SD 3.0 and e-MMC4.4x support, EZ-Dtect functionality, and the SLIM II architecture — for devices without USB 3.0 capability. The new West Bridge peripheral controllers act as data transfer co-processors to an embedded application processor in a handheld, freeing the processor from data-intensive operations. They employ a configurable ARM9 processor core that enables the devices to act as low power audio co-processors.