The most important new connector in town (especially if that town was Las Vegas during CES) is the new USB Type-C connector. The reason it is so important is that it has the potential to be the universal connector. Of course it replaces the old USB Type-A and Type-B connectors and the various form of mini-connector developed for small devices such as phones and cameras where the Type-B was way too large. But it replaces all the other connectors, too. The display connector. The power supply. Perhaps even the audio connector, the 3.5mm audio jack that was on every transistor radio from the beginning, then on every iPod, and now on every phone. For example, the latest MacBook Air has just a single USB Type-C connector for power supply, display, and USB connectivity (it still has 3.5mm for headphones). For the time being, the only practical way to use a single connector like that is to get an adaptor that provides power-supply, display, and USB Type-A separately so that you can put it where your old MacBook Air used to go. But during 2016, expect to see displays that support the planned functionality: the display provides power to the computer, uses the same cable for display, and provides USB for other devices. Then the adaptor will no longer be required. I suspect that, during 2016, a hot-selling device will be a USB hub that plugs into the new USB Type-C connector on the display and provides eight USB Type-A sockets for all your legacy devices such as printers, external disks, and Fitbit dongles. At CES earlier this month, I noticed a lot of equipment with USB Type-C connectors, cables, test equipment, and more. Obviously that is just anecdotal, but it confirms that it is a change that is happening fast. There is also a change from USB 3.0 to USB 3.1. To add to the confusion, last year USB 3.0, with a maximum transfer rate of 5Gbps, was renamed USB 3.1 gen 1. The old USB 3.1, renamed as USB 3.1 gen 2 last year, has a maximum transfer rate of 1 Gbps. Independent of the change of date rates, either USB standard can be run over the Type-C connector. The USB Type-C connector and the various flavors of USB 3.1 that are coming along at the same time are apparently the fastest adopted connector and transfer standard of all time. I expect it to make almost all other connectors obsolete (from old USB to Apple's Lightning connector, from the various display connectors to power-supply connectors, audio connectors, and video connectors). Wired Ethernet may survive for limited applications since it can have a higher data rate, although for phones and the smaller laptops it has already gone, replaced entirely by WiFi. My prediction: By the end of 2016, all phones, all tablets, and all laptops will just have a single USB Type-C connector. This fast adoption means that there is pressure on design groups creating SoCs for these devices to provide full functionality: higher data rates, power supply, and video and audio (which are an extended mode on top of the basic standard). This functionality creates two requirements. First, for IP such as the Cadence IP subsystem for USB, including a single-chip port controller IP that integrates USB Type-C, USB Power Delivery, and DisplayPort Alternate Mode (Alt Mode). The second requirement is an easy way to qualify the design and pass the USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF) compliance test. To speed up the qualification of a physical design for the USB-IF compliance test, Cadence's Sigrity technology portfolio includes automated support for IBIS-AMI model creation, fast and accurate channel model extraction using multiple field solvers, and an automated power-aware signal integrity analysis report to validate a virtual USB 3.1 channel. When used together, weeks can be shaved off the design process. Previously, IBIS-AMI model creation has been a manual process. The Sigrity 2016 technology portfolio, announced today, now leverages validated equalization algorithms used by the Cadence DesignIP SerDes PHY team and provides an automated methodology for combining, paramaterizing, and compiling the algorithms into an executable model. This will increase the pool of engineers capable of efficiently developing SerDes I/O models. The new “cut and stitch” technology features the ability to create accurate channel models ten times faster by using a mix of hybrid and 3D full-wave field solvers. With minimal manual intervention, the serial link channel can be divided into sections, solved for and automatically stitched together into a single interconnect model. The rapid model extraction technique enables engineers to trade-off various signal routing and layer transition strategies and still meet demanding time-to-market requirements. Other capabilities that have been enhanced in the portfolio are: New quasi-static 3D field solver integrated with 3D full-wave and hybrid solver technology available for both IC package and PCB analysis Electrical performance assessment integrated directly into the IC Package Designer’s layout environment Optimized decoupling capacitor schemes updated to Allegro PCB layout Improved power integrity analysis methodology for PCB designers These improvements in the Sigrity 2016 portfolio are not limited to USB 3.1, of course, although with its rapid adoption it is sure to be one of the standards where it is most heavily used. But generally it features capabilities that increase efficiency and speeds up the design process by enabling designers to qualify multi-gigabit standard interfaces (such as USB 3.1) through use of automated IBIS-AMI model creation, rapidly extracted power-aware interconnect models, and a compliance kit that negates the need to manually check and measure against the standards document.![]()
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