Programmable connectivity platform will help developers of handheld devices

Electronics OEMs are looking for integrated, high performance, yet flexible connectivity solutions to enable the rapid adoption of new technology for their handheld products, says Andy Green of QuickLogic. The ArcticLink platform addresses their need by offering hardwired, high performance controllers along with the ability to customize the device with a variety of additional functions.

The new device supports emerging handheld applications such as smartphones, portable media players, portable navigation systems, portable industrial products, and ExpressCard peripherals for handheld computing.

The hardwired interfaces in the ArcticLink device include a USB 2.0 High Speed On-the-Go (OTG) controller with integrated PHY, and a SD/SDIO/MMC/CE-ATA host controller.

The USB 2.0 OTG controller supports the maximum USB speed of up to 480 Mbps and can be configured as either a host or a device (OTG). The SD/SDIO/MMC/CE-ATA controller provides a SD card 2.0, SDIO host 2.0, MMC 4.1, or CE-ATA 1.10 compliant peripheral interface at speeds of up to 52 MHz.

Other functions, such as PCI, IDE, NAND flash controller, additional SDIO host controllers, SPI, Bluetooth 2.0 UART, display controllers and other custom interfaces, can be implemented in the programmable fabric. The innovative combination of configurability of the fixed modules and programmability of the fabric makes the ArcticLink platform extremely flexible and scalable to the needs of portable electronic designers.

The level of integration, low power consumption and flexible architecture of the ArcticLink platform make it a compelling companion solution for Marvell PXA application and communications processor platforms said Gary Forni, Director of Platform Enabling, Cellular Handheld Group at Marvell. The announcement of the ArcticLink family demonstrates the value of QuickLogic's companion solution strategy in portable electronics. QuickLogic is a key member of the Marvell partner program and we work closely to deliver complete system solutions to our customers.

The ArcticLink platform gives developers the ability to quickly harness a wide variety of technologies to their application processors without reducing CPU performance and utilization. The on-chip programmable fabric can be configured to interface to most application processors. An innovative, internal split-bus architecture allows the host processor to establish sustained and concurrent data transfers between the various host controllers without further intervention. By freeing the processor from these cycle-intensive I/O processing tasks, the ArcticLink platform helps reduce bill of material costs and increase battery life by enabling designers to use lower speed grade, lower cost application processors.

The ArcticLink solution platform is expected to begin sampling during Q2, 2007 and be in full production in Q3, 2007. It is available in both an 8x8 mm 121-ball CTBGA and a 12x12 mm 196-ball TFBGA lead-free package. ArticLink will sell for less than $4 in high volume in 2008.