Companion chip has common interfaces covered

A new multifunction IC allows engineers to rapidly and cost-effectively add a number of common interfaces to multimedia, networking and other embedded applications.

A new multifunction IC from Toshiba allows engineers to rapidly and cost-effectively add a number of common interfaces to multimedia, networking and other embedded applications where storing, processing, and communicating large volumes of digital content is important.

Toshiba's TC86C001FG is designed as a companion chip for modern, high-performance RISC microprocessors that incorporate a PCI interface.

The IC provides control and interface capabilities for PCI, USB, ATA/ATAPI, I2C and UART connectivity.

As a result, the chip significantly simplifies the connection of a wide variety of components and peripherals including hard disks, memory storage cards, printers, terminals, and any other devices that make use of these de-facto standard interfaces.

In addition to new designs, the TC86C001FG provides a highly simplified upgrade path for existing applications as the PCI interface can be used to quickly add the device to the internal PCIbus.

The TC86C001FG's integrated 3.3V, 32bit, 33MHz PCI interface is fully compliant with revision 2.2 of the PCI Local Bus specification.

An ATA/ATAPI-66 host controller provides the common interface needed for connection of hard disk drives (HDD), CD/DVD drives, CF cards and delivers a single channel for up to two devices (master/slave).

The USB host controller is fully compatible with USB specification version 1.1 and offers two USB ports that support device bandwidths of 12Mbyte/s (USB 2.0 full speed) and 1.5Mbyte/s (low speed).

An overcurrent detector protects the USB from abnormal current overload.

Also USB 1.1-compliant, the integrated USB device controller offers USB 2.0 full-speed USB data transfer and supports control transfer, bulk transfer and interrupt transfer.

Printer, image and mass storage device classes are all supported by this interface.

Finally, the serial interface controller built into the TC86C001FG provides the engineer with a single-channel I2C bus and a single-channel full duplex UART SIO or a maximum of five GPIO pins.

By using the I2C bus, engineers can reduce the number of wires used to connect to other boards and minimise the connections on the PCB when connecting further peripherals such as audio/video ICs.

In addition to the IC itself, Toshiba is also offering a number of support tools that will speed the development of embedded designs based on the TC86C001FG companion chip.

These include dedicated, Linux-based reference designs for digital audio/video solutions and development boards based on Toshiba's own RISC processors.

A PCI-based development board (RBHPE4300) featuring the Goku-S allows fast implementation in existing systems with free PCI slot.

Application notes and example code for the programming of the companion chip's interfaces are also available.

Back to top