Cypress’s EZ-USB FX3 Controller Powers Industry’s First USB 3.0 Oscilloscopes from Pico Technology

The scopes obtain power from the USB port, so they don’t need an external power adaptor.



“USB 3.0 ports are appearing on most new computers and laptops,” said Alan Tong, Pico Technology’s Managing Director, “so buyers of USB oscilloscopes will expect to benefit from the higher data transfer rate. With the new USB 3.0 PicoScopes, large data captures and streaming of large data sets are now much faster. Cypress’s FX3 controller enabled us to deliver these scopes to market quickly and cost-effectively.”



Cypress’s EZ-USB FX3 is the industry’s only programmable USB 3.0 peripheral controller. Its on-chip ARM9 CPU core with 512 KB RAM delivers 200 MIPS of computational power. FX3 is equipped with a fully configurable General Programmable Interface, which can be programmed in 8-, 16-, and 32-bit configurations. GPIF II enables FX3 to communicate directly to any processor, FPGAs, and image sensors and provides a data transfer rate at up to 400 Megabytes per second.



“We’re pleased to enable another first for USB 3.0 with the new PicoScopes,” said Mark Fu, Senior Marketing Director for the USB 3.0 Business Unit at Cypress. “FX3 is rapidly becoming the de facto USB 3.0 industry standard due to its performance, flexibility and ease-of-use.”