USB 2.0, the successor to a standard for peripherals that was largely popularized by Apple, has been experiencing significant, albeit slow growth. This week, the first chip for bridging USB 2.0 devices has passed specification testing.
In-System Design Inc., a system-on-chip design company specializing in digital bridging solutions, announced that its Universal Serial Bus (USB) 2.0 high-speed bridge chip, the ISD-300, has successfully met the compliance testing standards set by the USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF) for inclusion in its Integrators List.
“The ISD-300 makes it possible for computer storage manufacturers to easily adapt ATA and ATAPI storage devices to USB 2.0,” said Jack Wood, USB 2.0 Program Manager for In-System Design Inc. “Based on the interest expressed in our demo devices at Comdex in November, we know that peripheral OEMs are eager for easy-to-integrate USB 2.0 high-speed bridge solutions like the ISD-300.”
The ISD-300 supports data transfer rates of up to 480 Megabits per second (Mbps) — a 40x improvement over USB 1.1.
The ISD-300 is targeted specifically at enabling industry standard mass storage devices like hard drive, CD-RW and DVD-RAM to be easily connected to USB 2.0. Samples of the ISD-300 and developer kits are available now. Volume shipment will begin in first quarter 2001.
Apple has not publicly stated whether or not it will add support for USB 2.0 in future machines.