SAN JOSE, Calif.—Cypress Semiconductor Corp. and Motorola's Semiconductor Products Sector last week separately announced plans to provide silicon for the nascent USB-On-The-Go specification, a version of the popular serial-bus standard that enables point-to-point communications.
USB-On-The-Go is designed to let portable devices like digital cameras, cellular phones and PDAs connect to a wide range of USB-enabled peripherals and other electronic gear without the aid of a PC. "Now you have the ability to plug a camera into a printer, and the printer would have the driver to recognize the external storage device," said Brian Booker, product manager at Cypress, based here.
Cypress, which claims to be the largest supplier of Universal Serial Bus host and peripheral controllers, said it is already providing early samples of its first USB-On-The-Go device, the CY7C67200, dubbed EZ-OTG. The company promises to later distribute third-party software along with development kits to aid full system design.
Motorola, meanwhile, said it has licensed USB-On-The-Go technology from TransDimension Inc. (Irvine, Calif.), and will make the technology available through its second- and third-generation cellular phone platforms. The company believes USB-On-The-Go will "jump-start interconnectivity among handheld devices," said Cher Eng Lim, manager of Motorola's wireless and broadband systems division.
USB-On-The-Go chips must be able to act as both a host controller and a peripheral. Cypress' EZ-OTG chip does so by including a transceiver, a power boost circuit that operates down to 2.7 volts, a pair of serial-interface engines and configurable I/O blocks. Also included is a 16-bit RISC microprocessor that can be tapped if extra processing horsepower is needed.
The EZ-OTG closely resembles another USB chip that Cypress will introduce this week, the CY7C67300, or EZ-Host. Instead of mobile systems, this device is aimed at set-top boxes, DVD players, Internet appliances, wireless-access points and other applications. Unlike the On-The-Go device, EZ-Host has two ports for every serial interface instead of one and does without the power boost circuit.
The embedded microprocessor should have an important role to play in the EZ-Host device, which can act as a coprocessor. For example, a printer may need a USB connection and flash card slot, "and that flash card reader could be implemented by our part so the host CPU in there doesn't have to deal with it," Booker said.
Cypress said it is delivering samples of both devices now, and will ship general samples starting in April. Production will begin in May and the final development kit is to be ready in June.
The EZ-Host is housed in a 100-pin thin quad flat pack and priced at $4.99 in 10,000-unit quantities; the EZ-OTG comes in a 48-ball FBGA and lists at $3.99 in similar quantities.
