USB product introductions continue at a rapid pace

Electronic News, Sept 22, 1997

Philadelphia--The Universal Serial Bus got a strong sendoff at last year's Fall Comdex when a host of companies promised USB products by the middle of this year. Now, even as companies are preparing for Fall Comdex '97 in Las Vegas, USB developers recently unwrapped a variety of new USB products at the USB Implementers Forum here.

Among them: Vautomation, Siemens, Cypress Semiconductor and Mitsubishi.

Vautomation debuted what the company said it believes is the industry's first USB core with an added RISC core. The VUSB IntelliCore is designed for implementing a USB peripheral in an ASIC or field programmable gate array (FPGA) using system-on-chip design.

The VUSB includes microprocessor functionality for device control, has been verified in silicon and is compliant with the USB 1.0 specification. The VUSB IntelliCore is available priced at $90,000 in both VHDL and Verilog hardware description languages.

Meanwhile, Siemens Components introduced an on-chip USB module addition to its 8-bit C500 family of 80C52 compatible MCUs. The first products of the Siemens USB MCU line are the C540U and the C541U which differ from each other in ROM size and in the peripherals. Both are sampling with volume production expected in December priced at $3 for the C540U and $3.50 each for the C541U in quantities of 100,000 units.

Cypress Semiconductor rolled out the USB Starter Kit, which includes elements needed to start application development for USB peripherals including a sample USB application--a working USB thermometer, as well as hardware, software, source code and drivers. The Cypress USB Starter Kit is available priced at $99.

The Electronic Device Group of Mitsubishi Electronics America is rolling out two 8-bit MCUs for USB applications: the M37640, a high-end MCU that can be tuned for many full-speed (12-megabit-per-second) USB applications such as audio, printer, cellular phones and digital cameras; and the M37532 targeted for cost-sensitive low-speed USB applications. The M37640 sample in an 80-pin QFP package in 4Q97, priced at $10 in 10,000-unit quantities. The M37532 will sample in 36-pin SSOP package and be priced at $1.65 each in same quantities.