High speed USB 2.0 OTG component availability

Below is the response I got from Philips back in mid-September about the ISP1761. I have not followed up since then to see if samples are actually available from distributors now.

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Question:

What is the availability of the ISP1761 high-speed OTG cotnroller? When will parts be available from distribution? When will samples be available? When will eval kits and development support be available? What will the part cost be in low quantities?

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Philips Semiconductors answer:

Robert,

Thank you for contacting the Philips Technical Support Center.

We have had working samples of the ISP1761 for quite some time and now we expect that it will bereleased to full production at the end of September. At that time, samples will be made available through distribution. We have had working eval boards for several months so these will also be available at the end of September.

Regards

Paul B

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Rob,

Thanks for your comments. I just received the following reply from Phillips:

------------------- Start of Message ----------------------------- Question: Can you please tell me the expected availability date, and its associated datasheet, of the ISP171?

We are need of a component that can act as a high speed USB 2.0 host. This component does not have to be OTG compliant, but it would be preferred.

I look forward to your response.

Sincerely, Brad S.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------- Philips Semiconductors answer: Brad, Thank you for your interest in Philips Semiconductors. Attached is the datasheet for the ISP1761. Samples for this part will be available Q1 05. Regards, Chris L

------------------- End of Message -----------------------------

The datasheet they sent me has "Uncontrolled Copy" and "Objective data" markings and a "Company Restricted" waterwark, on every page. I guess they are trying to tell me that these parts are not ready for production.

I didn't ask about the availability of evaluation boards, but I assumed, based on the reponse you received from Phillips, that there will be boards available for purchase sometime in Q1 of '05.

Brad S.

Steve,

Yes, the part must support high speed USB 2.0 transfers. Ideally, we would like to be able to maintain a sustain transfer rate of 40 MB/s (320 Mbps). I don't know if this transfer rate is realistically possible but, so far, I haven't been able to find a lot of choices for developing a high speed USB 2.0 host in an embedded system.

This part does not have to support the OTG spec. If there is a part out there that will provide a high speed USB 2.0 hosting capability without adding a lot of complexity (components and/or software), then it would love to hear about it.

Thanks for your comments.

Brad S.

Hi, ok you need high speed. I doubt if you can maintain 40 MB/s in any case. Have you tried a USB drive under windows to see the max speed it gets? I have heard that the highest data rate under Linux is about

30MB/sec. The drives themselves cannot sustain too high a rate once they run out of cache, YMMV. The highest theoretical data rate for HS is somewhere between 52 and 56 Mbit per second. Depending on your HS controller and its memory interface you may get much less.

What kind of embedded system are you using? If you are doing a SOC system on an ASIC, ARC/Transdimensional sells a USB 2.0 core. Otherwise to maintain that kind of data rate you will have to use a recent x86 motherboard with a decent chipset that provides USB 2.0.

Regards, ~Steve

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USB OTG has other limitations. The current provided to the other end is severly limited. For full speed, I think it is 12 mA IIRC. I do not know if Hi Speed will allow higher currents. You may want to check this. Current USB memories use a lot more than 12 mA.

--
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Ulf Samuelsson   ulf@a-t-m-e-l.com
This is a personal view which may or may not be
share by my Employer Atmel Nordic AB

Ulf,

We are intending to place a restriction on our HS USB 2.0 port that will require any device that connects needs to be self-powered. Our current requirements will not require our host port to supply current to an external device (e.g. USB 2.0 HDD).

That being said, requirements have a funny way of changing......after the design has been completed and been turned over for PCB layout. Hopefully, that won't happen, but we probably should look into the current restrictions so we can be prepared in case that issue comes up. Brad S.

Steve,

Due to budget constraints, we will not be developing an ASIC for this project. If we cannot achieve our 40 MB/s goal, then what is a resonable goal assuming that the external device (e.g. USB 2.0 HDD) is not the bottleneck?

Brad.

Hi Brad,

Well without knowing what OS/driver, processor, memory speed, memory bus, high speed chipset etc. that is a very difficult question. If you are buying a Philips chip, they may have an estimate. Other issues about transfer rates are latency requirements and true throughput requirements. If you cannot do your app with an IDE (or SCSI) disk, then going to USB will not help. Much work is required to answer your questions.

Please send any conclusions to this list, people are interested.

~Steve

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Hi Steve,

We are in the early stages of a study/design phase for this project. The results of this phase will then help determine what HW/SW components (OS/driver, processor, memory speed/bus, HS USB 2.0 chipset) could be utilized. Part of the study phase will focus on determining the practicality of implementing a HS USB 2.0 Host port and given a pre-determined selection of some of these components, what realistic maximum transfer data rate could be attained.

If it is determined that a realistic sustained HS USB 2.0 transfer rate is well below 40 MB/s (e.g. 10 MB/s), then this information will be presented to the customer together with a Pro and Con list (additional risk, component availability, ease of data transfer, etc.) in order to make an informed decision. If the need for high speed, real-time data transfer is no longer a requirement, then a transfer rate of 10 MB/s may be more than adequate.

I realize that I mentioned in an earlier post that we required a high speed USB 2.0 host port. However, my crystal ball is just as cloudy as everyone elses and, given the limited number of choices for implementing a HS USB 2.0 host port in the near term (< 6 months), going with a full speed USB 2.0 host port that is capable of a sustained transfer rate of >= 1 MB/s may be just fine. We shall see... Brad.

We have a few USB 2.0 high speed systems here. All have USb device capability, some have USB host functions as well. Our low-end device uses a PowerPC running VxWorks, the device is a Cypress C680001 ( a part I certainly can't reccomend). Data rates are sustained in the 8-10 MB/s range. Keep in mind the host processor is rather slow, the data path to the USB device controller isn't optimum either.

Our high-end product uses a NetChip (now Plexus) 2280 and is interfaced over the PCI bus. This system is P4 based and runs XP. Sustained data rates are on the order of 25 MB/s.

On our low-end system , a host has been addded that interfaces over PCI as well. We chose the NEC uPD720101. Data rates have yet to be determined, but I am expecting them to be in the order of 10-15 MB/s. The high-end uses the ICH4 with data rates again in the 25MB/s area.

Hope this helps.

Regards, Glen

[snip]

Would you care to expand on your problems with the Cypress part? Do you have any other recommendations if someone wanted to develop a slave USB 2.0 system? (data to be shipped to a PC -- no other USB activity)

-frank

Support from Cypress was virtually non-existent. Emails would take days or a couple of weeks for a response, phone calls / voice mails suffered the same fate. The part was vapor at the time of our design, despite vendor promises that it was indeed a real device. Development now may not be as big an issue.

To contrast that with our experience with NetChip (now Plexus - and I have no clue what their response would be like, though we have had good response to PCI and PCI-Express questions). Emails typically were answered within the day and followed up with a phone call from them the next day. Very responsive, very knowledgeable, very helpful.

If I had it to do over again, I would have used a NetChip Net2270 or Net2272. Granted, it depends on what processor is in your system, etc.

Regards, Glen

Over the past four years we have used two different USB slave components from Cypress/Anchor Chips: AN2135 (USB 1.1) and CY7C68013 - FX2 (USB 2.0). During the development cycles we never even attempted making phone calls and the e-mail technical support from Cypress was hit or miss. Sometimes they were able to quickly provide a response that answered the question. Other times it took several exhanges of e-mail's to describe the problem in great detail before they would answer the question. This process was very frustrating and time consuming. On one ocassion, we answered our own question by performing a series of tests that should have been unnecessary.

We did look into using the Net2270 from NetChip. We even bought their evaluation board. It wasn't chosen because it would have required more embedded software to support it than the FX2 did. Our embedded host processor was an Intel StrongARM running a Linux OS. The slave FIFO mode on the FX2 was perfect for our application. Except for the one major issue that we resolved ourselves, the FX2 worked fine for our application.

Did you ever consider using an FX2 or similiar part instead of the SX2 for your application? Or was the FX2 overkill since you didn't need a USB slave device 8051-based core? When we were in the research phase of our design, the SX2 was not available for consideration. I would be curious to know what other problems you had when you had when using the SX2.

Brad

PLX, not Plexus.

Rob

Yeah, that's right - must have been on Holiday time there. Thanks Rob.

We looked at the FX2, for our device it was extreme overkill. Actually, the SX2 is an FX2 with teh ROM masked for that specific subset of functions that define an SX2. Again, had Cypress simply told us THAT - our lives would have been much easier. They also neglected to tell us that we were the 1st product to go to production with the SX2. That little bit of info would have been very enlightening as well.

At best they are hit & miss with technical support.

The SX2 (& FX2 I believe) have no means by themselves to sense an attach / detach. Most other devices have the ability to detect USB power. In the Cypress solution that has to be added manually. Of course the host will see the device, but the device will need to have external hardware to detect that event if necessary. Other issues - general immaturity of the Cypress low-level software. I also recall there was a bug in the mask of the SX2 requiring a lot of push-ups from us to get it work properly. There were other issues with the SX2 that required us to go to a second plug-fest to gain certification.

I would guess the part is stable enough for new development at this point. It was ugly when we went through it. Again, most of those hard feelings would have been resolved had Cypress been forthcoming with us as to the state of the device at that time. I have no issues designing with Beta or even Alpha hardware - provided I KNOW that's what I'm dealing with and have some responsive linkages to the factory.

Glen

One option could be philips isp1504 or SMSC usb3300 + otg ip-core in low cost FPGA, that is at least working and available solution (I have tested both PHY's). Of course the relative price of the FPGA fabric for the HS OTG core is still relativly high.

Antti Lukats

Antti -

Did you have to sign an NDA to get the 1504 parts and documentation? Are those parts generally available or just sampling?

Also, do you know of a HS OTG core with the ULPI interface or did you map UTMI ULPI yourself?

Thanks, Rob