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Has anyone had any experience with interfacing to an external (to the gate array) USB Chip ? I am looking for a simple, cheap, low power chip that interfaces directly to a NIOS or even better to Internal Memory. I know that there are USB controllers available that will do the job (I am currently looking into an Cycpress chip that has a 8051 controller, and it will do the job, however it might be a little "over kill". We don't need as many features as are offered there in!). We have also investigated a USB-to-serial chip which will also do the job, but we would prefer a direct USB connection.
Anyone got any ideas ?
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Your decision needs to be based on the interface speed you need.
The FTDI FT245 and FT2232 series have parallel FIFO modes that can be used to send traffic at 1MB/s (asynchronous FIFO mode) and 25MB/s (synchronous FIFO mode).
The Cypress FX2 is a USB 2.0 device with a pretty flexible general purpose bus interface. Unfortunately, it has an 8051 as a processor. Its not exactly the nicest processor to code and run an RTOS on.
The Cypress FX3 looks pretty nice. There is a new board from Arrow called the BeUSB 3.0 which plugs into the BeMicro-SDK and BeMicro boards.
http://components.arrow.com/manufacturers/cypress-semiconductor/ I purchased one, but have not had time to play with it. Yes, this is also probably overkill, but its another option to consider ...
Cheers,
Dave
Honored Contributor
