IC Manages USB Activities Free Of System Processor

Melding on-chip a dual RISC-core architecture with an embedded USB host stack, hub driver and the basic building blocks of USB device drivers, the AT43USB370 is designed to manage USB host activities without the need for any system processor intervention. The full-speed, USB 2.0-compliant host/ function processor is said to have enough on-chip intelligence to offload USB device driver functionality from the system processor. Application- specific device drivers can be built from a small set of ANSI C-compliant Application Protocol Interfaces (APIs) encompassing the basic building blocks of all USB device classes. Specifically addressing the needs of embedded system designers, the new 32-bit plug-and-play USB processor can interface with a wide variety of popular embedded processors. In addition, the device’s DMA engine, along with dual RX and TX FIFO buffering, is designed to ensure maximum data throughput for all four USB transfer types. In the host mode, the AT43USB370 can support multiple USB devices, while in the function mode, the processor can operate as a low- or full-speed device. The AT43USB370 comes in a 100-pin TQFP package and has a starting price of $4.89 each/10,000. Samples are available, as well as a development kit containing a reference design board and a firmware library. For more details, contact Jeff Gao at ATMEL CORP., San Jose, CA. (408) 441-0311.