Silicon Labs rounds out Smart Interface Portfolio with USB-to-SPI bridge chip

TEXAS, USA: Silicon Labs introduced a high-performance bridge controller that offers a turnkey solution for bridging a USB host and a SPI bus with driver support for Windows, OS X and Linux operating systems.

Silicon Labs' new CP2130 USB-to-SPI bridge controller provides industry-leading data throughput, exceptional configurability and a high level of mixed-signal integration in a space-saving 4 mm x 4 mm package.

The CP2130 bridge controller is ideal for new designs or upgrading legacy designs to include USB for a wide range of embedded applications including USB dongles, tablets, handheld controllers and testers, blood glucose monitors, docking stations, point-of-sale products, data logging modules and card readers.

With the proliferation of USB in the embedded world, developers are looking for cost-effective solutions to help speed time to market, and Silicon Labs developed the CP21xx bridge family with this goal in mind.

The CP2130 bridge controller enables developers to add USB functionality to their applications without requiring USB software, firmware or hardware domain expertise typically required with more complex alternatives.

The CP2130 bridge controller rounds out Silicon Labs' popular CP21xx smart interface portfolio, adding SPI to the roster of USB-to-UART, I2C/SMBus and I2S interface solutions.

The highly integrated CP2130 controller features on-chip functions and peripherals that eliminate the need for external components, which reduces BOM cost and board space.

The CP2130 device includes a USB 2.0 full-speed controller and transceiver, a serial peripheral interface controller that enables communication with a wide range of SPI slave devices down to 1.8 V, 348-byte programmable memory, crystal-less USB operation and an integrated 5 V voltage regulator rated at 100 mA.

Designed to give developers the utmost design flexibility, the CP2130 device's highly configurable SPI controller can communicate with up to 11 SPI slave devices using any of its 11 GPIO pins as chip-selects or be configured for alternate functions that can be used to eliminate external circuitry and components.

The CP2130 device is the fastest full-speed USB bridge controller on the market, providing up to 6.6 Mbps read throughput and 5.8 Mbps write throughput.

Geir Førre, senior VP and GM of Silicon Labs' MCU products said: "More and more developers rely on Silicon Labs' cost-effective, easy-to-use USB smart interface solutions to eliminate the complexities associated with adding USB to embedded systems. We designed the new CP2130 USB-to-SPI bridge controller with simplicity in mind, creating a highly integrated interface solution that provides developers with everything they need to add USB while reducing cost, complexity and time to market."