Product category:
Communications ICs (Wired)
News Release from: Cypress Semiconductor | Subject: EZ-USB FX2
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial
Team on 07 February 2001
Cypress puts USB 2.0 control all in one
chip
Cypress Semiconductor reckons its EZ-USB FX2 is the world's first USB 2.0 integrated peripheral controller.
Cypress Semiconductor reckons its EZ-USB FX2 is the world's first USB 2.0 integrated peripheral controller The device includes an 8051 processor, a serial interface engine, a USB transceiver, on-chip RAM and FIFO and a general programmable interface
This article was originally published on Electronicstalk on 10 Dec 2007 at 8.00am (UK)
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FX2 is a fully-integrated solution, requiring less board space and providing faster time to market.
The EZ-USB FX2 has a novel architecture, including a smart serial interface engine, which handles all basic USB functions, freeing the embedded MCU for application-specific functions and ensuring sustained high-performance transfer rates.
FX2 also includes a general programmable interface, which allows it to 'gluelessly' connect to any ASIC or DSP, as well as supporting all common bus standards, including ATA, UTOPIA, EPP and PCMCIA.
The EZ-USB FX2 is fully USB 2.0 compliant and backward compatible with USB 1.1.
"USB 2.0 is fast", said Norman Taffe, Cypress's director of marketing for USB products.
"At 480MHz, it's 40 times faster than USB 1.1, making it the perfect solution for high-bandwidth connections.
USB 2.0 is also low-risk - it's backward-compatible with 1.1, providing a seamless migration path for both developers and users.
And USB 2.0 is real - we're seeing lots of design-in activity at peripheral vendors".
Designing for USB 2.0 isn't simple, however.
At speeds 40 times faster than USB 1.1, there are many high-speed design considerations that come into play.
The EZ-USB FX2 solves the speed problem with a novel integrated architecture that keeps the processor from becoming a bottleneck.
Most USB functions are implemented on-chip, eliminating the need for external glue logic.
The result is a fast, low-cost solution that is easy to implement.
Cypress's 480Mbit/s USB 2.0 peripheral controller was the first product to demonstrate functionality at Intel's Architecture Laboratory.
According to Jason Ziller, USB-IF Chairman, "Cypress's success at Intel Labs should be the catalyst the design community needs to launch or ramp up their USB 2.0 development efforts".
The EZ-USB FX2 is sampling now.
It will be available in production quantities later in Q1, priced from $8.25 to $9.75 in volumes of 1000 units.
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