Cypress Adds Three Programmable USB 3.0 Controllers

Cypress Semiconductor Corp. announced three new USB 3.0 solutions that enable new applications of the 5Gb/s USB 3.0 standard.

The new additions to programmable USB 3.0 controller portfolio include the EZ-USB CX3 camera controller, the EZ-USB FX3S storage controller, and the EZ-USB FX3 CSP controller, which is the industry’s smallest USB 3.0 solution.

Cypress demonstrated three here at the Intel Developer Forum at Moscone Center West.

"The EZ-USB FX3 USB 3.0 peripheral controller that we introduced in 2011 has fueled SuperSpeed USB proliferation in high-definition video applications including machine vision, document scanning, 3-D gesturing, surveillance imaging, HD video capture, and a variety of industrial cameras," said Mark Fu, senior director of the USB 3.0 business unit, Cypress. "With the addition of CX3, FX3S, and FX3 CSP to the EZ-USB family, Cypress is empowering developers with more SuperSpeed USB solutions to accelerate their designs as the market transitions from USB 2.0 to USB 3.0."

Enabling SuperSpeed USB Applications
EZ-USB CX3 is a USB 3.0 programmable camera controller that enables developers to add USB 3.0 connectivity to any image sensors supporting the Mobile Industry Processor Interface (MIPI) Camera Serial Interface Type 2 (CSI-2) standard. CX3 supports MIPI CSI-2 version 1.01, up to 4 data lanes at speed up to 1Gb/s per lane, for a total bandwidth of 4 Gbps. CX3 is suited for high-definition, high-speed image-capturing applications and is capable of streaming uncompressed video at 1080p at 30 fps or 720p 60 fps. CX3 supports many image formats including RAW8/10/12/14, YUV422 (CCIR/ITU 8/10-bit), and RGB888/666/565. Based on the FX3 Platform, CX3 comes with an ARM9 CPU and 512KB SRAM, providing 200 MIPS of computational power for on-chip image data processing. It supports multiple peripheral interfaces such as I2C, SPI, and UART, which can be programmed to support Pan, Tilt and Zoom or other camera control functions.

EZ-USB FX3S is a USB 3.0 storage controller that supports dual Secure Digital or eMMC interfaces. Based on Cypress’s proprietary West Bridge architecture, FX3S enables simultaneous links among storage media, application processor and USB 3.0, allowing unrestricted three-way data flow for maximizing data transfer rate. FX3S’s on-chip support for RAID offers RAID-0 or RAID-1 configurations and can be programmed to support vendor-specific commends via Mass Storage Class (MSC) drivers that are standard in nearly all OSs. Equipped with a 16-bit configurable General Programmable Interface (GPIF II), FX3S is capable of interfacing with virtually any application processor and can be programmed as a boot disk for the processor. Measuring 10mmx10mm in footprint, FX3S enables a small RAID-on-Chip solution, and is suited for server virtualization and embedded storage applications.

EZ-USB FX3 CSP is an FX3 USB 3.0 peripheral controller in a Wafer-Level Chip Scale Package (WLCSP). Measuring 4.7mmx5.1mm, it offers more than a 75% footprint reduction from the FX3 controller in a Ball-Grid-Array package (10mmx10mm). FX3 CSP is a solution for industrial and consumer camera designs that demand small footprint for module miniaturization. It is a programmable USB 3.0 peripheral controller. Equipped with a 32-bit configurable GPIF II interface, FX3 is capable of interfacing with virtually any processor, FPGA, ASIC, or image sensor that requires USB 3.0 device functionality. The programmable 256-state GPIF II is capable of providing 400MB/s bandwidth to meet the data throughput requirements of the demanding USB 3.0 applications. The on-chip ARM9 CPU core with 512KB RAM delivers 200MIPS of computational power for applications that require local data processing.

EZ-USB FX3 controller comes with a configurable development kit (DVK) and companion software tool, the GPIF II Designer, to jumpstart any USB 3.0 project. The FX3 DVK contains necessary hardware, SDK and documentation that a developer needs to start hardware and software integration. Using the DVK, designers can explore FX3’s 32 configurable USB end-points, rich APIs, and other built-in interfaces – such as GPIOs, SPI, I2C, and I2S – for system level monitoring and control. The GPIF II Designer with GUI guides developers in simple, logical steps to configure FX3’s GPIF II in 32-bit, 16-bit, or 8-bit configurations to meet system requirements. Once configured, GPIF II provides connectivity to commonly used system interfaces such as slave FIFO, SRAM, ADMUX, or any vendor-defined interfaces. The flexibility and programmability of FX3 makes it a solution to add USB 3.0 connectivity to virtually system.

The CX3 controller is available for customer sampling. The FX3S and FX3 CSP controllers are in production.

All three products have been certified by USB-IF to receive the USB 3.0 logo.