Anchor Chips Announces Software-Configurable USB Chip Family for High-Speed Peripheral Equipment.SAN DIEGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 17, 1998-- EZ-USB Product Family Significantly Reduces the Cost and Complexity of Implementing USB USB in full Universal Serial Bus Type of serial bus that allows peripheral devices (disks, modems, printers, digitizers, data gloves, etc.) to be easily connected to a computer. Designs while Eliminating Design Risks Anchor Chips Inc., a developer of bus interface chips, Tuesday introduced a Universal Serial Bus See USB. (hardware, standard) Universal Serial Bus - (USB) An external peripheral interface standard for communication between a computer and external peripherals over an inexpensive cable using biserial transmission. (USB) product family that significantly reduces the cost and complexity of developing high-speed USB peripheral equipment. Anchor Chips' new product family, called EZ-USB, consists of highly integrated, single-chip solutions that incorporate an enhanced 8051 processor; 4, 8 or 16 Kbytes of RAM; an intelligent USB core The USB Core is a subsystem in the Linux kernel, with a specific application programming interface (API) to support USB devices and host controllers. Its purpose is to abstract all hardware or device dependent parts by defining a set of data structures, macros and functions. ; and high-performance I/Os. The high-performance feature set in the EZ-USB chip family provides for the first time an avenue for soft, downloadable configuration and decreases the number of components required to implement USB. "USB designs are difficult to implement, especially in high-performance peripherals," said Pete Fowler Pete Fowler (born 1969 in Cardiff) is a Welsh artist best known for his artwork for the Welsh band Super Furry Animals. He is a freelance illustrator and "monster creator" inspired by Japanese art. , Anchor Chips' vice president of worldwide sales and marketing. "As new products roll out there are numerous uncertainties associated with USB. Our goal was to reduce the complexity of implementing USB, while still providing the peripheral manufacturer with a design avenue that removes risks and product problems during the early phases of USB. Additionally, we wanted to take advantage of USB's significant increase in data bandwidth as well as apply a level of integration to USB that would result in the lowest system cost for customers. Our EZ-USB solution accomplishes these goals." EZ-USB chips provide engineers with significant performance advantages over existing USB solutions. By taking advantage of the double-buffer capability in the integrated 2 Kbyte FIFO (First In First Out) A storage method that retrieves the item stored for the longest time. Contrast with LIFO. See traffic engineering methods. FIFO - first-in first-out , EZ-USB chips can support a 1024 isochronous Time dependent. Real time voice, video and telemetry are examples of isochronous data. (communications) isochronous - /i:-sok'rn-*s/ A form of multiplexing that guarantees to provide a certain minimum data rate, as required for time-dependent data such as video or audio. packet within a single USB frame. EZ-USB chips can also support an effective data transfer rate through the data bus of over 2 Mbytes per second. Anchor Chips' EZ-USB chips are the first devices to have an enhanced 8051 core and an internal RAM For other uses, see Iram. Internal RAM, or IRAM, is the address range of RAM that is internal to the CPU. Some object files contain an .iram section. Generally, IRAM is composed of very high speed SRAM located alongside of the CPU. architecture. The enhanced 8051 core provides performance that is five times faster than standard 8051 processors. This increase in performance is achieved by doubling the 8051's clock rate from 12 MHz (MegaHertZ) One million cycles per second. It is used to measure the transmission speed of electronic devices, including channels, buses and the computer's internal clock. A one-megahertz clock (1 MHz) means some number of bits (16, 32, 64, etc. to 24 MHz while generally reducing the number of clocks per cycle from 12 to 4. The enhanced 8051 maintains software compatibility with the original 8051 so that engineers can use the same familiar 8051 development tools. The EZ-USB chips' integrated RAM allows the 8051 program and data memory to reside on-chip. This capability eliminates the need for external memory and makes it much easier and more flexible to implement USB designs. With EZ-USB chips, firmware A category of memory chips that hold their content without electrical power. Firmware includes flash, ROM, PROM, EPROM and EEPROM technologies. When holding program instructions, firmware can be thought of as "hard software." See flash memory, ROM, PROM, EPROM, EEPROM and FOTA. code is downloaded from the PC's hard drive. This function allows for quick design changes in the firmware and the driver code and enables peripheral designers to easily make updates and changes. The EZ-USB architecture is a very cost-effective and efficient design solution. It performs low-level USB tasks in hardware not firmware. The intelligent USB core that is incorporated into EZ-USB chips off loads the enhanced 8051 core by as much as 90 percent. Therefore, only 10 percent of the 8051 processing power is dedicated to the USB protocol, leaving 90 percent of the 8051 to handle peripheral functions. Since the firmware code is more efficient, USB software development time is also reduced, allowing engineers to devote more time to programming the peripheral firmware. EZ-USB chip architecture also decreases the amount of memory needed for firmware, which dramatically reduces board density and system costs. EZ-USB chips support more endpoints and provide more endpoint buffer memory than any other USB device. These chips support up to 16-endpoint pairs. This large number of endpoints provides engineers with a significant amount of flexibility when implementing USB designs. The chips also support the USB maximum packet length for isochronous data (1024 bytes) in a single USB frame. Anchor Chips' EZ-USB product family is specifically designed for high-speed peripherals that can use the full-rated bandwidth of 12 Mbps. The chips can be designed into a number of peripheral equipment applications such as POTS modems, digital still cameras, ISDN modems An alternative name for ISDN terminal adapter. The term is widely used, because the unit looks like a modem, connects to the same serial port as a modem and may support analog phones. See ISDN terminal adapter. , cable modems cable modem Modem used to convert analog data signals to digital form and vise versa, for transmission or receipt over cable television lines, especially for connecting to the Internet. , xDSL modems, digital video cameras, printers, security systems, biomedical bi·o·med·i·cal adj. 1. Of or relating to biomedicine. 2. Of, relating to, or involving biological, medical, and physical sciences. equipment and scanners. Also, all EZ-USB family members use less than one square inch of board space. This makes them ideal solutions for very small peripheral equipment, such as hand scanners. Product Pricing and Availability The EZ-USB product family consists of eight chips. All of the chips incorporate the EZ-USB silicon architecture with varying amounts of RAM and other I/O (Input/Output) The transfer of data between the CPU and a peripheral device. Every transfer is an output from one device and an input to another. See PC input/output. I/O - Input/Output features, which are shown in the following chart. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Part Package RAM I/O Rate # Prog 8-bit ISO (1) See ISO speed. (2) (International Organization for Standardization, Geneva, Switzerland, www.iso.ch) An organization that sets international standards, founded in 1946. The U.S. member body is ANSI. Price Number Type Size Bytes/Sec I/Os Databus Support 10 K ---------------------------------------------------------------------- AN2121SC 44 PQFP (Plastic Quad Flat Package) Refers to many varieties of QFP chip packages, which are molded in plastic. See QFP. 4K 600K 16 NO YES $5.46 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- AN2125SC 44 PQFP 4K 2M 8 YES YES $5.96 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- AN2126SC 44 PQFP 4K 2M 8 YES NO $5.57 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- AN2131SC 44 PQFP 8K 600K 16 NO YES $6.47 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- AN2135SC 44 PQFP 8K 2M 8 YES YES $7.31 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- AN2136SC 44 PQFP 8K 2M 8 YES NO $6.58 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- AN2131QC 80 PQFP 8K 2M 24 YES+ YES $7.71 Addr ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- AN2141QC 80 PQFP 16K 2M 24 YES+ YES $8.83 Addr ---------------------------------------------------------------------- All members of Anchor Chips' EZ-USB family are software compatible. Designers can upgrade or change an EZ-USB chip to support different RAM or I/O performance while still using the same board layout and software. For high-volume applications, the company offers software-compatible ROM versions of the chips. For pricing and availability on the ROM versions, please contact the factory. EZ-USB Xcelerator Development Kit Anchor Chips has a very comprehensive set of USB tools in its development kit for the EZ-USB product family. With advanced software utilities, the EZ-USB Xcelerator development kit supplies design tools that accelerate firmware and device driver development for EZ-USB chips. The kit contains a development board, Keil Software 8051 compiler, assembler Software that translates assembly language into machine language. Contrast with compiler, which is used to translate a high-level language, such as COBOL or C, into assembly language first and then into machine language. , and debugger Software that helps a programmer debug a program by stopping at certain breakpoints and displaying various programming elements. The programmer can step through source code statements one at a time while the corresponding machine instructions are being executed. ; a general-purpose USB Windows device driver; sample firmware/driver code; a technical reference manual; a USB Control Panel; and an EZ-USB 8051 firmware library and firmware frameworks. The USB Control Panel allows firmware developers to test their firmware without completing custom Windows drivers. Therefore, peripheral designers can develop firmware and drivers in parallel. With the EZ-USB firmware library, peripheral developers can link a series of function calls to quickly develop their peripheral function. The Xcelerator development kit is available today and is priced at $495. Established in 1996, Anchor Chips designs and markets integrated, system-level semiconductor solutions that simplify interfacing to emerging bus standards. The company's innovative Peripheral Component Interconnect See PCI. (hardware) Peripheral Component Interconnect - (PCI) A standard for connecting peripherals to a personal computer, designed by Intel and released around Autumn 1993. PCI is supported by most major manufacturers including Apple Computer. (PCI (1) (Payment Card Industry) See PCI DSS. (2) (Peripheral Component Interconnect) The most widely used I/O bus (peripheral bus). ) bus and Universal Serial Bus (USB) chips virtually eliminate the complexities of today's modern bus interface designs. Based in San Diego San Diego (săn dēā`gō), city (1990 pop. 1,110,549), seat of San Diego co., S Calif., on San Diego Bay; inc. 1850. San Diego includes the unincorporated communities of La Jolla and Spring Valley. Coronado is across the bay. , Anchor Chips can be reached at 619/613-7900 or www.anchorchips.com . -0- EZ-USB is a trademark of Anchor Chips Inc. Xcelerator is a trademark of Anchor Chips Inc. CONTACT: Catherine Batchelor, 760/944-8933 ccb@adnc.com or Anchor Chips Allyn Pon, 619/613-7900 allyn@anchorchips.com |
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