Fresco Logic showcases speedy USB 3.0

The folks at Fresco Logic, a silicon IP, IC systems, and services company, has demonstrated its SuperSpeed USB data transfer on their hardware development platform to the USB Community at last week's Intel Developer Forum (IDF).

The demonstration marks the first public showing of a working SuperSpeed USB host and device transferring data. USB is the most successful standard in history of computing, and the new SuperSpeed USB sets the new data transfer rate standard at 5Gbit/s on a bi-directional link.

"The USB 3.0 Promoter Group is please to see companies like Fresco Logic develop early implementations that showcase key features supported by the USB 3.0 specification," said Jeff Ravencraft USB 3.0 Promoter Group Chair. "The Fresco Logic demonstration shows the significant performance increase that will be supported by devices and hosts based on the USB 3.0 specification, and the value it will bring for consumers."

Working with members of the USB 3.0 Promoter Group, Fresco Logic constructed a hardware development platform that connects to a PC through a PCIe port. The platform is based on a PCIe add-in card with a Xilinx Virtex-5 FPGA device implementing Fresco Logic's SuperSpeed USB Host and Device Controller IP. With link flow control, packet framing and protocol layer overhead considered, a measured data transfer rate of 369MBps proves that high throughput can be achieved for SuperSpeed USB applications.

"We have leveraged over ten years of system-level and IP design expertise to architect a SuperSpeed USB Host and Device Controller IP that performs to the exact standards of the market, and this demonstration represents the quality of work we have done," said Jing-Fan Zhang, president and CEO of Fresco Logic. "We will continue to work closely with our partners and the USB ecosystem to enable the successful deployment of the SuperSpeed USB standard into the design community."

The folks at Fresco Logic have released their SuperSpeed USB Host and Device IP as part of their USB IP family of products. The products are shipping under a limited availability model to early adopters wishing to move quickly to integrate SuperSpeed USB into their products.

- Clive Maxfield
Programmable Logic DesignLine