USB core has power to burn for SoCs

ARC International describes USB Now as the world's first integrated and optimised USB for SoC IP platforms.

ARC International describes USB Now as the world's first integrated and optimised USB for SoC IP platforms.

USB Now includes On-The-Go (OTG) functionality for high-speed USB 2.0 peer-to-peer communications between mobile and consumer electronics devices.

OTG is a supplement to the USB 2.0 specification that offers limited host capability for portable devices, low power and the transfer of information between USB-enabled products without requiring a PC.

USB Now provides a fully integrated platform, consisting of the ARCtangentA5 synthesisable CPU core, USB 2.0 host/device core with OTG technology and embedded software stack.

Customer benefits include: reduced time to market, reduced development costs, reduced number of IP suppliers and reduced risk.

"USB Now is a major step forward and addresses the complex end-to-end challenges of embedded host and device Hi-Speed USB 2.0", commented Mike Gulett, President and Chief Executive of ARC International.

"It allows developers to analyse a system architecture and then fine-tune a synthesisable Hi-Speed USB 2.0 device core quicker and better than any alternative".

ARC's Now is available in either combined host/device or device-only options, and is also available for interface to non-ARC CPUs.

Features include: support for directly connected high (480Mbit/s), full (12Mbit/s) and low speed (1.5Mbit/s) modes; dual-role On-The-Go (OTG) support to switch between host and device; reduced memory footprint through use of ARCompact instruction set; embedded OTG software stack; support for UTMI and Philips interfaces and forthcoming UTMI+ transceiver interface; and extra CPU bandwidth available for system tasks.

In addition to reducing design risks, the USB Now platform configures many items in firmware that competing solutions cast in hardware.

This flexibility enables a single silicon implementation to track evolving market demands, or service multiple USB applications without change to the silicon.

The unique set of pre-integrated and field tested features reduce the costs and risk associated with design re-spins, and result in reduced silicon area and smaller code footprint.

The USB-To-Go platform enables increased market agility while pushing innovative products to market even faster.

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