CES 2012: Cypress Semiconductor achieves USB-IF Certification

According to Cypress, EZ-USB FX3 is one of the first USB 3.0 peripheral controllers in the industry, and the only programmable solution. It is equipped with a configurable General Programmable Interface (GPIF II), which is 8/16/32 data bits wide with data rates up to 400MB/s. GPIF II enables FX3 to interface directly to any processor, asic or fpga, while the GPIFTM Designer Tool kit helps users configure the GPIF interface to their needs. The on chip ARM9 cpu core with 512KB RAM delivers 200MIPS of computational power and is available for applications that require local data processing. Additionally, FX3 provides interfaces to connect to serial peripherals such as SPI, UART, I2C and I2S. "EZ-USB FX3 is analogous to a Swiss Army knife for designers; flexible, powerful and easy to implement," said Badri Kothandaraman, executive vice president, Data Communications Division at Cypress. "FX3 is being designed into a wide array of applications that require high speed content, streaming and low power consumption, including video and USB sub systems. In addition to the blazing side loading speeds enabling transfer of an HD movie in under a minute, West Bridge Benicia helps designers realise higher IOPS in tablets and smartphones, improving device performance and responsiveness. We are pleased that both these devices have received USB-IF certification and we are confident they will expedite the adoption of SuperSpeed USB." West Bridge Benicia is an optimised data transfer offload engine that enables mobile devices to double the IOPS (input/output operations per second) performance, stream high definition video, side load multimedia content up to 160MB/s and, according to Cypress, reduce battery charging time by 50% with increased charging currents up to 900mA. "The USB-IF is pleased to certify Cypress's SuperSpeed USB Controllers: EZ-USB FX3 (CYUSB3014) and West Bridge Benicia (CYWB0263BB)," added Jeff Ravencraft, president and coo, USB-IF. "Cypress' SuperSpeed USB controllers will help the expansion of the SuperSpeed USB ecosystem."