USB On-The-Go On The Move
September 11, 2002
By: Mark Hachman
SAN JOSE-USB On-The-Go appears to be…well, going.
The version of the Universal Serial Bus for portable devices was released as a finalized specification in Dec. 2001. This week, engineers at Philips said that its ISPI362 On-The-Go transceiver should enter production in one month to two, giving the market another source for the technology.
Philips has been sampling the chip for about two months, according to an OTG field engineer at Philips. The chip should enter production within two months, and would require controller logic. The ISSPI362 is part of a development kit Philips is shipping, complete with an add-on card with a single host port and one OTG port, as well as development software. USB class drivers and source code may be licensed from Philips, the company said.
USB On-The-Go allows portable devices, such as cell phones or PDAs, to connect to a PC via a USB 1.1-like connection. USB OTG's hook is that it also allows one device to act as a host when communicating with a non-PC device, allowing a digital camera to download images to a printer without benefit of a PC.
"Most of the digital handset manufacturers are evaluating this," the Philips engineer said. "Nokia will likely be first."
An OTG controller is already available; startup TransDimension Inc. said it began shipping its single-chip, dual-role On-The-Go (OTG) controller, the OTG243, to their customers in May.
But Intel, which has made USB a mainstay of the PC platform, doesn't look like a likely supporter of the technology. On the other hand, company executives didn't hold out hope that conventional USB would succeed.
'We must have given up on USB half a dozen times before it finally succeeded," said Sean Maloney, executive vice-president of Intel's Communications Group, in a press conference with reporters. Maloney expressed doubts that USB OTG would succeed, but added that including USB OTG or not might be a decision for Intel's desktop chipset architects to make.
