Innovative PHY is third generation for USB

Innovative Semiconductors has made available its third-generation USB 2.0 On-The-Go PHY intellectual property, I-PHY.

Innovative Semiconductors has made available its third-generation USB 2.0 On-The-Go PHY intellectual property, I-PHY.

I-PHY is designed for cost effective, reliable, low-power USB connections with personal computers and portable electronics devices including digital still cameras, digital video cameras, MP3 and personal media players, mass storage devices, thumb drives and more.

"Our cores are found in tens of millions of chips today, and we continue to improve our technology to enable consumer electronics manufacturers to go to market with superior performing products quickly and easily", said Nabil Takla, President and CEO for Innovative Semiconductor.

"With I-PHY, we've taken our USB 2.0 PHY technology and made it smaller, higher performing and lower power for smaller form factor portable devices".

Innovative introduced the first generation USB technology in 2001 and achieved compliance in March 2002.

The first generation products supported the USB Transceiver Macrocell Interface (UTMI) specifications for USB 2.0 devices and the Innovative engineers designed a USB 2.0 PHY Host interface.

The company introduced the second generation technology in September of 2002.

The second generation supported UTMI+ OTG specification and integrated board components to reduce board component count and achieve small form factor.

Innovative USB 2.0 OTG was certified by the USB-IF Innovative third generation I-PHY is smaller in area by about 30% compared with the second generation and lower in power by approximately 30%.

Most of the competing products are, at best, comparable in area and power to Innovative second generation.

Freescale, LSI Logic and National Semiconductor have licensed the Innovative USB 2.0 OTG PHY.

Manufacturers have a competitive edge when using Innovative USB 2.0 I-PHY and controller logic, because it is swiftly extendable among product lines, which enables rapid time to market and frees up internal engineering resources to focus on designing more differentiating product features.

With Innovative's extensive history of "firsts" in the USB market, manufacturers can trust I-PHY to be reliable and compatible.

"Using Innovative IP, manufacturers can spend more time focusing on their core competencies", Takla added.

"We're building on the success of our USB knowledge to provide certified USB PHY and controller logic for this rapidly expanding market", Takla continued.

With the low cost, high-performance and low-power requirements of today's USB OTG solutions, future markets such as cellphones and digital cameras make the need for consistent and reliable communication between devices an essential element of technology development.

USB currently has an installed base of more than one billion ports with an additional 2.5 billion interfaces forecasted by In-stat to ship by 2006.

Availability is immediate.

Licence fees vary depending on the process technology and the configuration.

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