We demonstrated our USB 3.0 PHY and USB 3.0 Device controller at DesignCon in Santa Clara this week.  We also demonstrated our DDR PHY and controller as well.

We will have a more extensive video of the USB 3.0 PHY/Core demo shortly.  Here’s a short Video log from the show floor.

USB 3.0 and DDR at DesignCon Feb 2010

Dennis Crispo, Vice President of Marketing for DisplayLink demonstrates the DisplayLink USB 3.0 prototype using Synopsys USB 3.0 Digital Device Controller IP and HDMI Digital Tx Controller IP.

With the 10x speed improvement over USB 2.0, the 5Gbps SuperSpeed USB 3.0 connection enabled Displaylink to demonstrate the ability to stream in real time, high definition, uncompressed 1080p video from a USB 3.0 hard drive and PC through our USB 3.0 IP on the HAPS platform and displayed via HDMI on a Samsung 1080p LCD TV.  Check it out http://www.synopsys.com/dw/ipdir.php?ds=dwc_usb_3

To try to be more clear,

A USB 3.0 Hard Drive provides the video to a PC with a USB 3.0 Host.

The PC is running a media player that plays the video.

The video is sent out through the USB 3.0 Host port to the FPGA board.  The FPGA board has the Synopsys USB 3.0 Device controller.  The Controller decodes the packets, sends them over to our HDMI Tx Controller, and out over an HDMI cable to the Monitor.

Even though Gervais Fong is our SuperPHY guy, we are using the TI USB 3.0 PHY (our friends in interoperability).

Thanks to Gervais, Dennis, and DisplayLink for this video.

Here’s a short History of USB and a few USB 3.0 just shot this video in 2 takes, and used the first one because it’s less horrible than then second one.

The pictures I mention are actually in the previous Blog entry, that are below (somewhere).

I really hope this works.

As the LA Times reports, Steve Jobs announced the Apple iPad.  In addition, to WiFi, and Bluetooth, it includes a USB 2.0 port to connect to a Mac.  I really, really hope that you can connect this to a PC also with USB.  I assume this with use iTunes as the primary syncing tool, just as I do with my iTouch.

To the weirdos on the internet who would point out “There’s no USB 3.0!”  I would like to point out that this does not include USB 3.0 because this device has probably been in design for 2-3 years, probably before the USB 3.0 specification came into existence.  In other words, technology doesn’t appear out of thin air.

I also would like to point out that since the first version of the device has 64GB of Flash (most expensive option), next year’s will probably have 128GB, and the year after that 256GB.  This assumes that they follow the path of the first 3 generations of iTouch, the iPods, the Nanos, of which our family owns multiple versions of each.  I think the iPhone may have followed this path also, but I don’t own one of those.  Of course, I expect cell phones and media players from other leading companies will upgrade their memory capacity. 

Acer has been making big strides in the netbook area, and is introducing a eBook which isanother tablet.  Acer says that it will support Apps and run the Google Chrome OS.  In fact, Stan Shih throws down the gauntlet at the entire US PC industry including Apple and says the US PC brands will disappear like US TV brands. 

With so many products in this space, the tablet PC will be the perfect candidate for USB 3.0 for transferring content faster from a primary PC that downloads data from the internet regularly through an internet connection that is slower than WiFi or USB 3.0.

I’m going to go ask my significant other for permission to buy an iPad now.  Maybe if I buy two…

Here’s a sample of the USB 3.0 products found at CES 2010.

This is DisplayLink’s USB 3.0 Video Display Demo. You can see the blue SuperSpeed USB 3.0 cable plugged into the PHY daughter on the picture on the right below.  You can see the black HDMI cable connected to the a daughter card in the middle.  The FPGA board is our Synopsys HAPS-51 board.

Motherboards from ASUS, Gigabyte, and MSI with USB 3.0 Hosts

Seagate advertised it’s USB 3.0 Hard Drive in a giant banner at the shuttle bus drop-off.  This is for their portable hard drive.

Western Digital had it’s USB 3.0 bookshelf hard drive on display.

Fujitsu advertised it’s USB 3.0 to SATA chip that converts existing SATA drives to make them USB 3.0 capable.

And a bunch of USB 3.0 Host Add-In Cards for desktops and ExpressCards for notebooks. And one USB 3.0 Hub

Buffalo’s hard drive was everywhere also.

My thanks to James Wu for these photos.  I may have a few more later.