USB 2.0 compliance testing moves forward

USB 2.0 compliance testing moves forward
By Jerry Ascierto, EE Times
March 2, 2001 (4:35 p.m. EST)
URL: http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG20010302S0086

SAN JOSE, Calif. — The final stage of USB 2.0 deployment is well under way, as the USB Implementers Forum continues its work to ensure the spec's compliance at an Intel lab in Hillsboro, Ore., according to Jason Ziller, a technology initiatives manager at Intel Corp.

The first products that meet the USB 2.0 spec will start to hit the market in the next couple of months, Ziller said, including add-in cards, PC cards, storage devices and scanners, most of which were demonstrated at the USB 2.0 Pavilion at this week's Intel Developer Forum, held here. Though motherboards with a discrete host controller are available from both Intel and NEC, a native USB 2.0 capability may take a little longer to appear in notebooks and desktops as OEMs wait for Microsoft Corp. to write needed drivers.

"In conjunction to Intel's compliance testing, we've expanded the compliance testing program as well," Ziller said. "We've expanded out to independent test lab s in several geographies, such as Japan, the U.S., Europe and Taiwan. Hopefully, by the fall IDF, we'll be able to certify all of those independent labs, and shut down ours in Hillsboro."

But for now, Ziller said the group is focused on transitioning USB 2.0 from its silicon to its product development phase. Part of that effort can be seen in the case of Gain Technology Corp. (Tucson, Ariz.), which this week announced a partnership with Intel to bring a USB 2.0 physical layer transceiver to market later this year.

Gain to offer IP

Gain Technology, a seven-year-old company with 60 employees, is known as an analog/mixed-signal design services house, having worked for the likes of Lucent and Maxim. But the company will now begin to sell its USB 2.0 Macrocell intellectual property (IP) cores, and then move to offering actual silicon in the second half of the year.

"Intellectual property is where we'll be heading to first, and we've already begun getting calls to start porting the co re to our customers foundries," said Steve Millaway, president of Gain. "And we'll be transitioning to a product phase soon."

Gain will supply the analog portion of the chip, and will license Intel's USB 2.0 digital PHY technology for the digital portion. Initially fabricated on a 0.18-micron line at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., the chip's core is currently available for licensing, and silicon samples of the core will be available in the second quarter.

Meanwhile, the Wireless Working Group of the 1394 Trade Association this week announced a liaison program with the 802.11 Task Group 'e,' which will coordinate design efforts and communicate requirements and report on the progress of the two groups. The liaison seeks to establish a formal process by which the 1394 group's requirements can be communicated formally to the IEEE 802.11e group.

At the IDF this week, a demonstration showing rudimentary methods of instantiating 1394 content over an 802.11 transport was shown. The demo showed a PC that wasn't equipped with a 1394 interface delivering content to a 1394 display device through the 802.11 WLAN medium. The Wireless Working Group of the 1394 Trade Association looks to develop a standard implementation guideline specification for bridging 1394 to 802.11.