SAN JOSE -- Cypress Semiconductor Corp. is sampling a 48-MHz Universal Serial Bus (USB) controller that attaches "gluelessly" to practically any peripheral system, the company said here today.
The EZ-USB FX family provides fast I/O speeds and configurable interfaces to mass storage, Home PNA, wireless LANs, video, DSL, cable modems, scanners, and printers, while laying the groundwork for USB 2.0, according to Cypress.
The new FX (Faster/Extended) family expands the EZ-USB feature set, adding superfast I/O, Direct Memory Access (DMA), internal FIFOs and general programmable interface (GPIF). GPIF can be configured to be glueless to ASICs, DSPs, or standard interfaces to wireless LAN chip sets and Home PNA chip sets. The internal FIFOs can be configured to 8- or 16-bit data-path and allow master or slave operation.
To support applications that move large amounts of "bursty" data, the EZ-USB FX's DMA engine transfers data between the peripheral interface and external buffer memory. After this transfer, the peripheral subsystem can then spend time fetching new data while the EZ-USB FX transfers DMA packet data from the external buffer to USB, maintaining maximum USB performance.
The CY7C646XX USB line--which will be marketed as the EZ-USB FX family of devices--opens a variety of new USB application possibilities, Cypress said. With DMA capabilities, EZ USB FX has I/O burst data rates of 96 megabytes per second. With the high-speed I/O rates, EZ USB FX also lays the groundwork for development of Cypress' high-speed USB 2.0 devices later this year. USB 2.0 has a target speed of 480 megabits, which is 40 times faster than the full-speed USB standard of 12 Mbits/sec.
Cypress recently licensed technology from Intel Corp. that it said will accelerate its development of USB 2.0 products (see Sept. 30 story). The San Jose chip maker has enlisted Intel, Fujitsu, Hewlett-Packard, inSilicon, Kawasaki LSI, Lucent Microelectronics, STMicroelectronics, and Texas Instruments as backers of its new interface.
"The FX line expands Cypress' target market and sets the stage for our continued exponential growth in the USB market in the year 2000 and beyond," said Cathal Phelan, vice president of Cypress's Interface Products Division. Cypress is the USB market-share leader, according to market research firm Dataquest Inc., in San Jose, and Cypress said expects to sell 50 million USB devices this year.
"There is huge potential in USB, and Cypress aims to capitalize on that potential," said Dan McCranie, Cypress executive vice president of sales and marketing.
The CY7C646XX family is sampling now, with production volumes available next month. The EZ-USB FX family consists of seven different products in packages of 52 PQFP, 80 PQFP and 128 PQFP. The CY7C64XX parts are priced from $6.88 to $8.13 in 1,000-unit lots. Higher-volume pricing is available. The Xcelerator Developer Kit is available immediately and priced at $495.
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