USB 2.0 Specification To Spark New Chips

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April 21, 2000 (1:29 PM EDT)

The final USB 2.0 specification is expected to be released next week at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference in New Orleans, and to become available on the USB Implementers Forum website next Thursday.

The release is expected to kick off a wave of silicon that supports USB 2.0, which will extend the full-speed transfer rate of USB from a possible 12 megabits per second in USB 1.1 up to 480 Mbits/s.

The first systems using the 2.0 specification are expected to debut for the holiday selling season, and a number of companies are expected to announce 2.0 silicon at the USB Developers Conference, planned for May 15-18 in Anaheim, Calif.

NEC (stock: NIPNY) took an early plunge in mid-April, unveiling a USB 2.0 host controller that supports the full 480-Mbit/s data-transfer rate. NEC is sampling the device this month and plans to begin commercial production in September. NEC's silicon is backward-compatible with the full-speed USB 1.1 standard, as it incorporates two USB 1.1 controllers that will double the 12-Mbit/s speed limit of peripherals that conform to the USB 1.1 spec.

The physical layer on the NEC controller supports the full 2.0 transfer rate, and can dynamically configure the bandwidth according to the speed capabilities of the connected devices, an NEC spokesman said.

The USB initiative has enabled far simpler connections of peripherals to PCs, compared with serial ports or SCSI links. Because the connections can be made while the host system is up and running, USB has been one of the true success stories in making PCs easier to use.

Jason Ziller, an Intel (stock: INTC) manager who heads up the USB 2.0 promoter's group, said the new spec, with data rates of 60 Mbytes/s, is about 40 times faster than the USB 1.1 specification.

The higher bandwidth will enable applications such as interactive games and digital image creation, and will be used in scanners, printers, external storage devices, and broadband Internet connections. A gigabyte of data can be backed up in less than a minute to an external drive with USB 2.0, for example. Also, a high-density flash card containing dozens of high-resolution images can be downloaded from a digital still camera to a computer in a matter of seconds, Ziller said.

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