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Acer Laboratories Inc. (ALi) today announced a highly integrated USB2.0-compliant IDE Device Controller-M5621 for external storage connection and USB2.0-based PC-peripheral applications technology to the mass volume PC marketplace.

Under the influential promotion of a leader such as Intel, USB2.0 technology has recently taken a front row seat to become the hottest technology in 2002. The addition of 480Mbits/s results in a performance improvement of 4,000%, exceeding the 12Mbits/s raw bandwidth of USB1.1 as well as that of IEEE 1394a (400MHz), allowing more applications to be realized and existing applications to provide more functionality. This performance enhancement has set the high-speed application gateway for PC and consumer oriented applications to a much broader spectrum. For instance, desktop video cameras running the USB2.0 protocol and signaling now yield higher resolution with richer colors than before. The more efficient bus protocols intends that end-users can combine resource-demanding applications, such as image creation, with productivity applications, such as office suites, together without systems crashing or grounding to a halt.

ALi is committed to delivering the finest highly integrated and cost-performance-competitive USB devices. Other than the built-in USB2.0 specification compliant link layer engine and transceiver macro, M5621 has integrated a high-performance microcontroller, embedded data memory buffer and programmable GPIO capabilities to provide a seamless system interface for working directly with industry-standard IDE interface or 8/16-bit PIO/DMA interface. These capabilities provide the flexibility in delivering full USB2.0 operations to many applications arena, including high-speed external storage device application, imaging peripherals, and networking/communication based product application.

ALi's M5621 can work independently as a USB2.0 to IDE bridge controller, through the industry's IDE/ATA/ATAPI standard to interface with peripheral devices such as DVD/CD-ROM/CD-R/CD-RW, HDD, MO, ZIP & Compact Flash, etc. With embedded high-performance PIO/DMA interface and optional USB2.0 UTMI-compliant interface, M5621 is also ideal for applications in high-speed image scanner, desktop printer, digital still/video camera, multi-function peripherals, digital copier and network/communication-based interfaced products. ALi also plans to provide the USB2.0 related modules as customization components to support major customers for ASIC integration needs.

ALi's M5621 is designed with 0.35um low-power CMOS process and packaged in 64 or 100 pins LQFP/PQFP.