1998-11-09 , E/IC-1035/65
Product News From Philips Semiconductors

Philips Semiconductors, Europe's largest semiconductor company, today announced the release of the  PDIUSBD12, a high performance, low cost and feature-optimized USB interface device. It allows conventional peripherals to be upgraded to USB devices to take advantage of the simple 'hot plug-and-play' capability of the bus, easily and at low-risk. As designers can keep the existing peripheral architecture intact, this greatly reduces development time and costs, and results in fast and cost-effective development of USB peripheral solutions. The latest addition to Philips Semiconductors new 'FlexiUSB™' range of USB interface ICs, the PDIUSBD12 is suitable for full-speed USB peripherals including scanners, printers, modems, removable mass storage devices and digital still cameras.

Fully conforming to the USB specification Rev. 1.1, the PDIUSBD12 complies with most device class specifications: Imaging Class, Mass Storage Devices, Communication Devices, Printing Devices, and Human Interface Devices. It communicates with the system microcontroller using a full-speed, general-purpose parallel interface, replacing existing interfaces (RS232, IEEE1284, Centronics or SCSI) with a USB interface and allowing it to be easily integrated into existing systems. For example, an existing Enhanced Parallel Port (EPP) scanner can be converted to a USB device just by adding the PDIUSBD12 and a standard  80C51 microcontroller, and it offers an immediate cost reduction for low-end SCSI applications.

Nic Roozeboom, USB Product Marketing Manager in Sunnyvale where the product is manufactured, said, "By simply adding a PDIUSBD12, existing peripherals can be converted to USB peripherals, allowing a quick and easy design approach with lower capital risks than ASICs. With its generic interfacing capabilities, proven design robustness and feature enhancements, the PDIUSBD12 can be coupled to any preferred or application-optimized microcontroller or CPU, providing an incremental solution to implementing USB which preserves the existing architecture and investments."

Building on four years' USB experience including many industry firsts, the PDIUSBD12 includes several innovative features such as GoodLink™, SoftConnect™ and LazyClock™. GoodLink allows a quick visual check of whether peripherals are working properly, delivering significant cost savings in user support 'hotline' costs, while SoftConnect provides a software-configurable connection to the bus. LazyClock keeps a very low clock frequency during suspend mode which, together with a very low 'suspend' power consumption, allows for easy design of peripherals which comply with ACPI, OnNow and USB power management requirements.

These features provide verified robustness and excellent power and EMI behaviour, contributing to significant overall system cost savings and simplifying the task of integrating advanced USB functionality into peripherals with only a few additional external components. The device also allows for a high degree of diversification and trouble-free implementation of USB functionality.

The PDIUSBD12 was developed at Philips' Asia Product Innovation Centre in Singapore and is supported by application-specific reference design kits including firmware, to ensure a short, low-risk design path and fast time to market. Designer documentation such as application notes, sample code and technical training manuals are available from Philips Semiconductors' USB website at  http://www.flexiusb.com. The PDIUSBD12 is priced at US$ 2.65 in quantities of 10,000.

Philips Semiconductors, a division of Royal Philips Electronics, headquartered in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, is the ninth largest semiconductor supplier in the world and the third largest supplier of discretes in the world. Philips Semiconductors' innovations in digital audio, video, and mobile technology position the company as a leader in the consumer, multimedia and wireless communications markets. Sales offices are located in all major markets around the world and are supported by systems labs.

GoodLink and SoftConnect are Philips trademarks.
SoftConnect is patent pending.

For more information, see also BG9807: Universal Serial Bus Backgrounder from Philips Semiconductors