Cypress and Icron Technologies Announce Joint Interoperability For USB 3.0 Controllers and Active Cable Extension

Cypress’s EZ-USB® USB 3.0 Peripheral Controllers 5-Gbps Data Throughput Successfully Extended from 3 Meters up to 15 Meters by Icron’s ExtremeUSB® Technology

SAN JOSE, Calif., and BURNABY, British Columbia, November 3, 2014 – Cypress Semiconductor Corp., (NASDAQ: CY), a leader in USB controllers, and Icron Technologies Corp., a leader in USB and video extension technology, today announced the completion of successful interoperability testing between both Cypress’s EZ-USB FX3 USB 3.0 peripheral controller and EZ-USB CX3™ camera controller and Icron’s USB 3.0 Spectra 3001-15 active copper extension cable. Icron will demonstrate the solution at the VISION trade show in Stuttgart, Germany in Hall 1 booth I65 from November 4-6, 2014.

USB 3.0 is gaining popularity in machine vision and industrial cameras thanks to its 5-Gbps bandwidth that enables high-resolution, high-frame-rate imaging in real time without the need for compression, which degrades image quality. However, USB 3.0 currently has a maximum cable length of approximately 3 meters, and many vision applications require longer distances between the host computer and the camera. Icron’s Spectra 3001-15 bus-powered copper cable extends USB 3.0 performance to 15 meters, allowing Cypress USB 3.0 solutions to be easily and cost effectively deployed across a wider range of machine vision and industrial applications. The active cable provides a full 5V, 900mA of current and includes Icron’s ExtremeUSB® suite of features such as transparent USB extension, true plug-and-play (no software drivers) and compatibility with all major operating systems, including Windows®8.

“Cypress USB 3.0 peripheral controllers are the solution of choice for vision camera makers, so it was an important step to establish interoperability with our USB 3.0 Spectra 3001-15 active cable,” said Glenn Antonelli, Icron’s Vice President of Marketing. “Our versatile ExtremeUSB technology platform extends operating distance while also providing a rich suite of features that make our active cable easy to use.”

“Cypress’s machine vision customers have requested ways to extend the 5-Gbps data throughput of our EZ-USB FX3 and CX3 USB 3.0 controllers, and we are pleased to now offer proven interoperability with Icron’s active cable extension,” said Mark Fu, senior marketing director of Cypress’s USB 3.0 Business Unit. “Our FX3 and CX3 solutions are the market’s only programmable USB 3.0 peripheral controllers, giving our customers unmatched design flexibility.”

EZ-USB FX3 and CX3 are the industry’s most popular USB 3.0 solutions for HD video. The FX3 is equipped with a highly configurable General Programmable Interface (GPIF II) which can be programmed in 8-, 16- and 32-bit configurations. GPIF II allows FX3 to communicate directly with application processors, FPGAs, and image sensors and provides a data transfer rate at up to 400 Megabytes per second. The CX3 controller supports the Mobile Industry Processor Interface (MIPI) Camera Serial Interface Type 2 (CSI-2) standard with up to 4 lanes at speed up to 1 Gbps per lane. CX3 interfaces directly with any MIPI CSI-2 compliant image sensor or image processor. CX3 is capable of steaming 1080p video at 30 frames a second or 720p 60 fps without the need for compression. Both FX3 and CX3 come with an ARM9 CPU and 512KB SRAM, providing 200 MIPS of computational power for image processing and buffering. More information on Cypress’s EZ-USB 3.0 portfolio is available at www.cypress.com/usb.

Cypress offers the SuperSpeed Explorer Kit, a low-cost, easy-to-use development platform based on FX3 that enables designers to add high-performance USB 3.0 throughput to virtually any system. The kit, now available for $49 online, easily interfaces with external devices via three accessory boards that connect to Aptina image sensors, Altera FPGAs and Xilinx FPGAs, respectively. It also includes an integrated debugger with a standard USB interface to further simplify designs and speed time to market. The new book “SuperSpeed Device Design by Example” by USB expert John Hyde provides a practical approach to designing and implementing SuperSpeed USB peripherals, and it includes a series of examples using the SuperSpeed Explorer Kit. The book is available online at Amazon.

About Icron Technologies
Icron Technologies is the leading developer and manufacturer of high-performance USB and video extension solutions for commercial and industrial markets worldwide. Icron’s patented extension technology extends Video and USB devices over many media types including Cat 5e, Fiber, Wireless, DisplayPort®, and over a corporate LAN. Icron’s extension products are deployed in a wide range of applications including pro AV, industrial automation, machine vision, medical imaging, aerospace, interactive whiteboards, digital signage, remote desktop extension, security, enterprise computing and isolated USB, or anywhere a PC needs to be remotely located from a display or peripheral device. icron.com.

About Cypress
Cypress delivers high-performance, mixed-signal, programmable solutions that provide customers with rapid time-to-market and exceptional system value. Cypress offerings include the flagship PSoC® 1, PSoC 3, PSoC 4 and PSoC 5 programmable system-on-chip families. Cypress is the world leader in capacitive user interface solutions including CapSense® touch sensing, TrueTouch® touchscreens, and trackpad solutions for notebook PCs and peripherals. Cypress is a world leader in USB controllers, which enhance connectivity and performance in a wide range of consumer and industrial products. Cypress is also the world leader in SRAM and nonvolatile RAM memories. Cypress serves numerous major markets, including consumer, mobile handsets, computation, data communications, automotive, industrial and military. Cypress trades on the NASDAQ Global Select Market under the ticker symbol CY. Visit Cypress online at www.cypress.com.