IOGEAR Selects Cypress TetraHub Chip for MicroHub Family of USB Hubs; Small Chip Size and Technology Advantage Claim Cypress Win for Small-Sized Hub Targeting Mobile Workers.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 26, 2004

Cypress Semiconductor Corp. (NYSE:CY), the market share leader in USB, today announced that IOGEAR, a leading manufacturer of USB hub devices, has designed Cypress's TetraHub(TM) USB hub controller chips into its MicroHub(TM) family of portable, high-speed USB hubs. Cypress's TetraHub technology provides MicroHub users with a significant increase in device performance and productivity.

Cypress's TetraHub chip (CY7C65640) is the industry's first USB 2.0 hub controller to integrate one "transaction translator" (TT) in each downstream port, delivering a full 12 Mbps of bandwidth to each connected legacy full-speed USB peripheral. Newer high-speed USB 2.0 peripherals will realize speeds of 480Mbps. Transaction translators are crucial to ensuring the forward and backward compatibility of USB 1.1 (low/full-speed) and 2.0 (high-speed) devices. Competing USB 2.0 hubs force connected full-speed peripherals to share a single 12 Mbps data channel, which can bottleneck data and render a system inoperable when multiple devices are used simultaneously. The installed base of full-speed peripherals is still very large creating possible customer support issues when used with these competing single-TT hubs.

TetraHub continues to penetrate the high-speed hub market, where it has claimed significant design wins from most of the industry's major hub makers, according to Paul Novell, managing director of the Wired Business Unit in Cypress's Personal Communications Division. "TetraHub prevents device enumeration failures by providing four times more available bandwidth to downstream ports than competing solutions," Novell said. "Our Multi-TT architecture allows for more flexible connection sequencing, resulting in more reliable performance and fewer support calls for our customers."

Described as "the world's thinnest USB hub" by IOGEAR, the four-port, MicroHub(TM) (GUH274) is designed for the multi-tasking "road warrior." This plug-and-play unit measures just 3.5 x 1.5 inches, stands less than one-half inch tall, and features a retractable USB cable conveniently tucked away into the hub's casing. The device allows users to expand a single USB port to four ports, providing the highest performance available in a USB hub.

"MicroHub was engineered with the mobile professional in mind," said Jeff Sun, product development manager at IOGEAR. "Thanks to the small package size of the TetraHub chip, we were able to design a very successful, small form factor hub that is easy to carry around and supports up to four devices."

Sun added that the designing with Cypress's TetraHub USB hub controller chip was made simple. "Cypress provided us with a reference design kit that helped to smooth out the development process and get our product to market quickly," he said.

Cypress's TetraHub solution provides USB hubs with the system intelligence needed for high levels of data control. It supports all three USB speeds: low-speed (1.5 Mbps), full-speed (12 Mbps) and hi-speed (480 Mbps), enabling multiple devices of varying speeds to operate on the hub simultaneously. The TetraHub device can function as a high-bandwidth controller in standalone hubs, monitor hubs, port replicators, and docking stations, or it may be used to increase the number of USB ports on a PC without integrating additional host controllers. It is available in a space-saving, cost-effective 56-lead QFN package. Cypress also offers a hub reference design and evaluation kit to shorten and simplify product design cycles.

Photos:

Photos related to this announcement are available at: www.cypress.com/support/link.cfm?mr=microhub.

About Cypress

Cypress Semiconductor Corp. (NYSE:CY) is Connecting From Last Mile to First Mile(TM) with high-performance solutions for personal, network access, enterprise, metro switch and core communications-system applications. Cypress Connects(TM) using wireless, wireline, digital and optical transmission standards, including USB, Fibre Channel, SONET/SDH, Gigabit Ethernet and DWDM. Leveraging its process and system-level expertise, Cypress makes industry-leading physical layer devices, framers and network search engines, along with a broad portfolio of high-bandwidth memories, timing technology solutions and reconfigurable mixed-signal arrays. More information about Cypress is accessible online at www.cypress.com.

About IOGEAR

IOGEAR, Inc., headquartered in Irvine, Calif., is a leading connectivity and peripheral manufacturer that provides complete KVM (Keyboard, Video, Mouse), FireWire, USB (Universal Serial Bus) 1.1 / 2.0, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and HomePlug solutions, targeting home users, mobile users and small to medium sized businesses. The company distributes products throughout North and South America, Europe, Asia-Pacific and the Middle East. For further information, please visit www.iogear.com.

Cypress and the Cypress logo are registered trademarks of Cypress Semiconductor Corp. "Connecting From Last Mile to First Mile," "TetraHub" and "Cypress Connects" are trademarks of Cypress. "MicroHub" is a trademark of IOGEAR, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.