Recently in Development Tools Category

Developments in interconnect, or chip-to-chip, communication technologies are a crucial part of high-speed mobile device development. In its discussion of SMSC's patented Inter-Chip Connectivity (ICC) technology, a recent article in the EE Times mentioned MCCI's "protocol analyzer" and HSIC verification tool, which we call the MCCI Catena® 1910 HSIC. ICC is a chip-to-chip interface that uses USB data transfer protocols over a maximum bus length of 10 cm. ICC was standardized by the USB-IF in 2010. The Catena 1910 captures, traces, and analyzes data transferred over this interface.

Another recent press release discussed the MIPI Alliance's High Speed Interface (HSI) specification, which provides for an improved on-chip-interconnect solution intended to compete with SMSC's ICC. If you're going to work with MIPI, take a look at the Catena 1910 MIPI. The 1910 MIPI can act both as a passive receiver and as a transmitter/verifier.

On Friday July 9, 2010, MCCI-Japan's press release went out over the wire with more details about MCCI's upcoming seminar and product demos at the Wireless Japan expo.  Read more at Kyodo News Wire. Read more at www.mcci.com

On July 14 - July 16, MCCI will exhibit at Wireless Japan. We will demonstrate two different MCCI ExpressDisk™ Driver products:

The MCCI ExpressDisk BOT Driver utilizes the Windows-provided SCSIport/Storport Driver to deliver better performance. The driver combines multiple Read/Write requests into a single request to achieve the highest throughput, achieving up to a 30% better performance when compared to other BOT drivers.

The MCCI ExpressDisk UAS Driver is a complete replacement for Mass Storage Class and utilizes the Windows-provided SCSIport/Storport Driver to achieve maximum data throughput speed. The MCCI ExpressDisk UAS Driver can achieve 300% of BOT throughput.

We will also demonstrate the MCCI Catena® 1910. This Catena is an HSIC (High Speed Inter-Chip USB) Device, Host Emulator, and Protocol Analyzer. It allows an HSIC host/device pair and supporting software to execute in a local, real-time environment, and includes USB transaction-level data capture. It is connected to a host PC and controlled via PCIe. In "Host mode - Analyzer," the PC software views the UUT (Unit Under Test) as a HS USB device. In "Analyzer Mode" the Catena 1910 supports traffic capture of the HSIC bus for traffic flowing between two other HSIC devices, e.g. an applications processor and a modem. The Catena 1910 supports all standard USB operational characteristics, including LPM. The demonstration will show operation with an HSIC hub and mass storage device.

On July 15, MCCI is sponsoring a seminar "Advances in USB,"  also at the Big Sight. Speakers at the July 15 seminar are:

• MCPC Secretary General Masahiro Hataguchi ("Welcome") 
• ASMedia Senior AVP of Marketing Weber Chuang ("USB 3.0 Market Status and Achievements Today")
• TI Consumer and Computer Interface/Senior Member of Technical Staff, Systems and Architecture Grant Ley ("Advances in USB Storage")
• MCCI Senior Standards Architect Geert Knapen ("Audio-Video (AV) Over USB")
• MCCI CEO Terry Moore ("USB 3.0 Software Architecture and Implementation Issues")

Go to http://www.expocomm.com/wirelessjapan/confreg.html to register. You must register to attend the seminar. Use the "Conference Registration" button on this page.
 
You need not register to attend the exhibition. Come visit MCCI in booth B-205 in the Big Sight's East Halls 4 and 5.

A few weeks ago, MCCI CEO Terry Moore participated in a Roundtable Discussion on the Role of Software in System-Level Verification, moderated by Chip Design Magazine's Ed Sperling.

Read what Moore and other industry leaders have to say about low-power engineering in Sperling's "Experts at the Table" column: Part I and Part II.

Online registration for the SuperSpeed USB Developers Conference ends Thursday, March 25!
After this date, only on-site registration will be available at US$445 for USB-IF members and US$695 for non-members.

This is your opportunity to hear from the creators of SuperSpeed USB and obtain key information about how to incorporate it into your product roadmaps.

Come visit MCCI at Booth 44!

MCCI CEO Terry Moore will participate in a Roundtable Discussion on the Role of Software in System-Level Verification at the Santa Clara Convention Center on Tuesday, March 30. Other participants include Frank Schirrmeister (Synopsys), Shabtay Matalon (Mentor), and Bill Neifert (Carbon). Ed Sperling, Editor-in-Chief of  System-Level Design Community, will publish a transcript of the proceedings in that forum within two weeks of the event.

Here's an abstract of the theme under discussion:

The ongoing shift of project efforts from hardware to software in the era of multiple processor cores on a chip has significant impact on verification itself. More and more developers report that they use software on the embedded processors to verify the surrounding hardware. It is not only co-verification of hardware and software, the techniques to verify both seem to cause a melting process between both worlds of verification at the system-level. This roundtable will explore the role of software for verification and analyze the impact it will have on verification going forward.

MCCI will showcase its SuperSpeed USB 3.0 software solution as well as the USB 2.0 and 3.0 tools used by Synopsys experts and industry technical leaders at the 20th Anniversary Synopsys Users Group Meeting (SNUG) in the Santa Clara Convention Center, March 29 - March 31, 2010. SNUG is Silicon Valley's largest technical conference, drawing 2,000 Synopsys technology users. 100M units of Synopsys IP run on MCCI software. Take a look at what's planned and come visit MCCI in Booth 44.

MCCI is now a confirmed exhibitor in the SuperSpeed USB Developers Conference slated for April 1-2, 2010 in Taipei, Taiwan. The MCCI USB 3.0 product line, including a fully Windows-compatible xHCI host stack, the Model 2101 USB 3.0 Connection Exerciser, and the MSC-300 Mass Storage Class Driver / UASP PC Host Driver products, will be demonstrated. To register, contact USB-IF. 

The MCCI Catena® 1820 gives HS USB On-The-Go (OTG) and Host firmware developers everything needed to prototype OTG firmware in Microsoft Visual C, while working on a Windows 2000, XP, or Vista system.

The Catena 1820 combines an ExpressCard interface with a Renesas R8A66597USB Host Controller and Peripheral Controller chip and a low-level driver for Windows 2000, XP, or Vista. This controller is memory mapped through the Windows ExpressCard Root Port. The Catena 1820 allows developers to write register-level code that accesses the R8A66597 just as it would in a target system. Code can then be recompiled and used unchanged on a target embedded system.

Read more here.