Cypress Semiconductor ( NYSE : CY) today announced the immediate availability of GPIF™ II Designer software for its EZ-USB® FX3 controller for SuperSpeed USB 3.0.

The GPIF (General Programmable Interface) II Designer provides designers with a powerful, easy-to-use graphical interface for configuring the programmable GPIF II interface of the EZ-USB FX3 to communicate with any microcontroller, ASIC, FPGA, image sensor, or similar device requiring USB connectivity. The EZ-USB FX3 is the industry's first and only certified programmable USB 3.0 device that adds USB SuperSpeed connectivity to virtually any system.

This software tool provides an intuitive interface with just three easy-to-use screens: a Configuration Window for defining I/O and control lines, a State Machine Canvas for defining the state machine of the interface, and a Timing Simulation Window for checking the interface timing.

The tool also provides industry-standard project management capabilities for FX3 customers to save and reuse their GPIF II interface designs. The tool also generates C header files that can be integrated with FX3 applications using the FX3 API library and used with standard ARM tools.

“The GPIF II Designer is a key element of the FX3 development infrastructure. “The state machine-based approach used in the GPIF II Designer enables users to design interfaces in minutes using an easy-to-use bubble diagram approach. The combination of the GPIF II Designer and the FX3 API library provides a powerful platform for FX3 designers worldwide, reducing development time for SuperSpeed applications and accelerating time to market,” said Youngdo Lim, Cypress regional president.

The GPIF II Designer comes bundled with ready-to-use customizable resolutions for asynchronous and synchronous slave FIFOs, asynchronous and synchronous ADMUX, and asynchronous SRAM interfaces. Designers who require one of these predefined interfaces in their system can easily adapt it to their own needs by selecting from a standard set of parameters including bus width (x8, x16, x32), endianness, and clock settings.

Product Reference
A free download of the GPIF II Designer tool, along with a brief overview video, is available at www.cypress.com/fx3 . For more information about GPIF II Designer and the EZ-USB FX3, please contact USB3@cypress.com .

Cypress EZ-USB FX3
The EZ-USB FX3 is the industry’s only certified programmable USB 3.0 peripheral device. It features a fully configurable general programmable interface with a high data rate of 400 MBps and 32 endpoints. The on-chip ARM9 CPU core with up to 512KB RAM delivers 200 MIPS of compute capability, which can be utilized for applications requiring local data processing. Additionally, the FX3 provides interfaces to serial peripherals such as SPI, UART, I2C, and I2S. The FX3’s small 10 X 10 mm footprint in a 121-BGA package, flexible clock inputs, and low-power 1.2-V core voltage make it suitable for a wide range of industrial and consumer applications. In short, the FX3 provides developers with a highly flexible and integrated solution to add USB 3.0 connectivity to any system.