e.Digital Corporation (fka EDIG)

[cksla]

edig and set-top boxes-

Doc42av $$$$$ 24 Jan 2002, 11:13 AM EST Msg. 888287 of 888342

Talked to RP yesterday. Everything he said we already know about(Dataplay, MTV, Auto, bundling, and all else from shareholder letter). The only new info dealt with set-top boxes. He said most of EDIG'S work with set-top boxes involves the software and the interface that will enable users to quickly download content to portable devices. So we have something else to look forward to! Anyway, things look awesome and what a Spring it should be. Cheers
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Doc42's post re tele conf w/ RP and edig's involvement with STBs comports with my understanding as well--but what the heck does it mean--more Putnam doublespeak spewing out one more carrot to chew on; possibly, but let me suggest you chew on the following and see if this helps answer the question: What's up Doc?
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USB On-The-Go: P-to-P Communications in Mobile Devices

Kosta Koeman and David Murray -- Electronic News, 8/27/01

USB On-The-Go (OTG), a supplement to the USB 2.0 specification, adds further functionality to USB specifically for portable devices and post-PC products, including mobile phones, PDAs, cable set-top boxes and home gateways. OTG enhances USB by adding the features necessary to accelerate adoption of USB into these classes of products. These features include smaller connectors, lower power provisions and the ability to interconnect devices directly to one another. In order to achieve direct communication between devices, implementation of some level of host functionality is required. USB OTG will allow entire classes of products, typically able to connect only to PCs, to connect directly to one another and exchange information. Consumer products such as digital cameras, printers, mobile phones, PDAs and MP3 players are among the list of such devices. USB OTG brings USB capabilities to a market that is forecast to represent more than 1 billion devices by 2003.

To get an idea of the types of products that are going to incorporate USB OTG, look no further than the list of companies helping to develop the specification. These include companies that ship products to consumers and corporations as well as the solution providers that will make USB OTG a reality with connectors, cables, embedded controllers and software. The list includes Advanced-Connectek (Acon), Aten, Cypress Semiconductor, Ericsson, Hewlett-Packard, Imation, InSilicon, Intel, Lumburg, Maxim, MCCI, Microsoft, Motorola, NEC, Nokia, OnSpec, OPTi, Palm, Philips, Qualcomm, SoftConnex, Texas Instruments, TransDimension and Tyco Electronics.

Why "On-The-Go"?
One of the first questions about the USB OTG initiative is simply, "Why USB On-The-Go?" when there are other point-to-point options available, such as IEEE 1394? First, USB provides an inexpensive infrastructure for connecting peripherals to a PC. Also, when operating at 12Mbits/sec.—or full speed—the power required for transmitting a signal is low. By using a popular standard such as USB and enhancing the specification to allow for point-to-point communication, the method of transmitting data between two directly connected peripherals is maintained.

But the real reason that USB OTG is so compelling for these products is that they can now connect to the more than 900 million (and growing quickly) USB-enabled products shipped so far. In contrast, IEEE 1394 is ideal for consumer electronics and other products that require high-bandwidth connections such as digital video cameras that lack the low-power requirements of mobile phones and other handheld portable devices. However, it is important to note that USB OTG devices may transmit data at the 480MHz signaling rate, but due to power requirements, most portables with power constraints will likely only transmit at the 12MHz signaling rate, which is sufficiently fast for most of their applications.

As devices such as mobile phones become more and more intelligent, they increasingly need a connection with other devices. USB On-The-Go is a perfect fit as it allows the mobile phone to be controlled by the PC, and if the user is mobile or on the road, it allows the phone to communicate with other peripherals with the same low-power, inexpensive connection.

Another common question regarding USB OTG is, "What about the PC?" USB OTG does not diminish the PC's role in the digital world. In fact, the role of the PC is enhanced. Even though more content is generated away from the PC, ultimately it is the PC or a server that must process or handle the generated content at some point. USB OTG simply allows for the exchange of that data while in a mobile environment.

Though USB has proven to be an excellent means for connecting devices to a PC, there are several instances where manufacturers of handheld products needed connectivity prior to USB OTG.

Since no suitable standard existed, the solution for manufacturers was to adopt proprietary solutions. This has resulted in an increasingly fragmented market in which products with different propriety solutions could not connect and could not be updated to connect together.

USB OTG now provides the solution with a common interface to unify this market. By updating the firmware of a USB OTG device, new products and product types can be supported. This will result in decreasing obsolescence, increased interoperability of devices and increased consumer confidence and demand for these products.

As the finishing touches are being put on the USB OTG specification, many mobile and post-PC product manufacturers are designing the functionality into their next-generation products. Although USB is known as one of the most successful technologies introduced in recent years with more than 900 million units shipped to date, USB products such as PDAs and mobile phones, which include the enhanced OTG functionality, have the potential to dwarf even those numbers very quickly.
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DIGITAL APPLIANCE MANUFACTURERS TURNING TO EMBEDDED
INTERCONNECTIVITY TO JOIN POST-PC ERA COMMUNICATIONS
Chip Implementations of USB “On-the-Go” Specification Enables Shift
IRVINE, Calif., January 16, 2001 – Not too long ago, the rallying cry of
information technology was “A computer on every desk.” After that milestone was
achieved, mobile computing raised the question, “Who wants a desk?” Today, there’s a
growing chorus of anticipation for “Who needs a computer?”
Many businesses and consumers who have joined the mobile society view the
PC as nothing more than a necessity to connect their hand-held digital appliances to
databases, peripheral equipment and other appliances. If all products that are now
“slaves” to the PC could incorporate the essential PC connectivity in their own design,
there would be no need for the host. That concept is rallying the industry to embark on
the Post-PC Era.
If the Post-PC era is equated to embedded microprocessors, 95 percent of
processor chips already go into non-PC devices such as automotive systems, peripheral
equipment and digital appliances, according to International Data Corporation, an
industry research firm. If mobility is the measure, there are some 300 million mobile
appliances on the market, including cellular phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs)
and portable MP3 players to name a few examples. Either way, embedded and mobile
systems are getting more and more intelligent.
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Digital Appliance Manufacturers Turning To Embedded
Interconnectivity To Join Post-PC Era Communications…/Page 2
But embedded systems and mobile devices have one thing in common that
places them on this side of the frontier – they must connect to a PC or network server to
exchange data. The bridge anxiously sought by digital appliance manufacturers is
independent interoperability in both wired and wireless solutions.
One of the most promising allies of manufacturers is the USB Implementers
Forum (USB-IF), a non-profit organization founded by leading companies with a vested
interest in PC technology to develop specifications for the universal serial bus. The
original achievement of USB-IF is a common interface specification for PC and
peripheral manufacturers to use for connecting virtually any number of peripheral
devices to a PC without internal interface cards or the hassle of configuration setups.
Now the USB-IF is working on a specification called USB On-the-Go for direct
connectivity between mobile devices and peripheral equipment. Examples of On-the-Go
implementations would be connecting a digital camera to a photo printer or a PDA to a
smart phone via USB ports on all devices.
Translating the new specification to silicon is one of the tasks assumed by
TransDimension Inc., Irvine, Calif., a company founded in 1997 to develop embedded
interconnectivity solutions for intelligent mobile devices and post-PC appliances. One of
the major system-level issues of eliminating the PC from the loop focuses on the logic
for controlling input/output operations, according to David Murray, vice president of
marketing.
The USB architecture of the PC Era is based on a desktop system or network
server “hosting” all of those peripheral devices in a master-slave relationship so they can
work together. So what do the slaves do when the master goes away? They become
masters as well, according to the TransDimension solution, which is currently embodied
in the first embedded USB host controller chip already selected by a number of major
household-name manufacturers. In the long run, the master-slave issue will be
transparent to users, but at the device level it will be negotiated by a protocol that is part
of the USB On-the-Go specification.
Both the master and the slave part of the relationship are standard in the USB
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Digital Appliance Manufacturers Turning To Embedded
Interconnectivity To Join Post-PC Era Communications…/Page 3
specification as standalone units. The master part of the relationship, which is the most
difficult of the two, has been approved by the USB-IF and has enabled TransDimension
to safely commit its design to silicon. The dual role master-slave specification is still in
the final stages of approval.
TransDimension is a member of the On-the-Go committee and is poised to
implement dual role functionality with master-slave negotiation intelligence in its chip
early this year, based on the committee’s scheduled adoption of a specification early this
year. Although there are chip products on the market today with both master and slave
functionality, they pose a significant risk to manufacturers of mobile equipment intended
to interconnect via the USB specification, Murray noted.
“Chips that are not compliant with the On-the-Go specification will be a real
nightmare for OEMs by this time next year,” Murray said. “Major manufacturers of
peripheral equipment and mobile devices are driving the USB On-the-Go effort and are
sure to adopt it, creating compatibility issues for those who make the leap too soon.”
Murray is quick to point out that chip design is more than just USB compliance,
and there are many other factors for equipment manufacturers to consider. “There are
major architectural and software differences between PC-centric and embedded
solutions, and the former is far too complex to consider as a model for the latter,” he
says.
The PC, for example, uses a PCI (peripheral control interface) bus to mediate
CPU and universal serial bus functions under overall control of the Windows operating
system. TransDimension’s USB controllers eliminate the PCI and talks directly to the
CPU via real time operating systems developed specifically for embedded applications.
Another part of the solution is a USB connector shrunk to embedded chip dimensions
and capable of switching between master and slave roles.
For wireless applications, the company is embedding Bluetooth firmware with its
USB host controller, another industry first. Bluetooth is a consortium of mobile phone,
portable computer and chip companies formed to develop a voice/data wireless
- more -
Digital Appliance Manufacturers Turning To Embedded
Interconnectivity To Join Post-PC Era Communications…/Page 4
connectivity standard. Among three standard interfaces, USB is the one preferred by
the Bluetooth consortium.
While anticipating the USB-IF to complete the dual role On-the-Go USB
specification, TransDimension is exploring new applications for its host controller
technology, Murray said. One leading candidate is the familiar TV set-top box, which will
soon be not so familiar according to manufacturers who envision it as an Internet
gateway and controller of networked home appliances other than a television set.
“The set-top box is a perfect example of an On-the-Go lifestyle in which you have
a number of devices that can periodically use digital TV as a non-PC display, such as a
digital camera, WebCam, scanner, printer, game controller, MP3 players or CD mass
storage,” Murray said. “It doesn’t necessarily take anything away from the home PC, but
it provides a flexibility of location and big screen experience.”
Until TransDimension delivered its embedded USB host controller in silicon,
there was no viable solution for Post-PC manufacturers of host devices. The embedded
implementation is so different that it re-defines the state of the art for interconnectivity,
according to Murray.
Other high-priority applications can be determined from the list of active
participants in the USB On-the-Go committee, which includes Ericssen, Qualcomm,
Hewlett-Packard, Kodak, Imation, Palm Computing, NEC, Intel and Microsoft, in addition
to TransDimension.
“As a supplier to equipment manufacturers, our two years of development work
will reach its full impact on consumers starting next year when a new generation of USB
and Bluetooth-enabled products reach the market,” Murray said. “There is a lot of
argument about what will become the centerpiece of the Post-PC Era, but from our
perspective it can be anything as long as it offers interconnectivity to everything else.”
About TransDimension
Headquartered in Irvine, California, TransDimension is a privately held company
founded in 1997 to develop and market embedded and mobile connectivity solutions
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Digital Appliance Manufacturers Turning To Embedded
Interconnectivity To Join Post-PC Era Communications…/Page 5
based on USB and Bluetooth technologies. TransDimension's product lines include
patent-pending ICs, IP cores, software stacks and development tools that enable direct
wired and wireless interconnectivity for I/O and a wide range of applications and mobile
devices that until now have required an indirect means, such as a PC host, of
exchanging data. More information about TransDimension can be found at
http://www.transdimension.com.
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