IP vendors enable SuperSpeed USB IP take off in 2012

By SemiWiki

January 15, 2013

SuperSpeed USB has been clearly ranked in the Interface protocols winner list, see this previous post. It could be interesting to dig into this IP market segment, determine in which applications USB 3.0 has been successfully deployed and who are the IP vendors serving this market, enabling SuperSpeed USB to take off.

SuperSpeed (SS) USB protocol is based on a physical layer offering a 5 Gbps speed, offering 4 GT/s effective bandwidth (due to 8b/10b encoding scheme), or 500 MB/s. This is about 10 times the High Speed (HS) bandwidth, and the protocol is very similar to PCI Express gen-2, in other words SS USB is a technology breakthrough when compared with HS USB. Thus, chip maker will carefully select the provider for USB 3.0 IP solution including the PHY and the Controller. The PHY selection should lower the overall risk, and the PHY IP should be as low power as possible… and available in the targeted technology, considering the many variants offered in the latest technology nodes: 40LP, 40G, 40LPG for TSMC 40 nm, or 28HP, 28HPM, 28HPL, 28LP for TSMC 28nm!

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