Cypress Supercharged West Bridge Turbo-MTP 2.0 Controller

Cypress Semiconductor Corp. introduced an upgraded module for its West Bridge peripheral controllers that offers the fastest sideloading solution for transfer of multimedia files from a PC to handheld device via the widely-used Media Transfer Protocol (MTP).

The new Turbo-MTP 2.0 module enables users to sideload a feature-length movie in less than 45 seconds – more than 10 times faster than traditional MTP implementations. Additionally, the new module includes drivers for the Android operating system, making the West Bridge solution compatible with a wider array of handhelds.

Since its introduction of the West Bridge architecture, Cypress has continued to raise the bar for user sideloading experience. The Turbo-MTP 2.0 solution provides a 2X improvement over Cypress’s earlier Turbo-MTP 1.0 module. The Turbo-MTP modules dramatically increase the effectiveness of MTP, a USB-based protocol used by Rhapsody, Napster, Verizon V CAST and other online video and music services. MTP is the de-facto method for sideloading due its simplicity and ease of use for consumers. Using MTP, transferring media becomes a seamless operation with automatic synchronization and hot-unplug features. With MTP, a handheld retains access to storage even while plugged into a PC – users can still make a phone call or watch videos while connected, instead of facing a ‘PC Connect’ frozen screen. Additionally, MTP enables the transfer of metadata such as song titles, images, user ratings and Digital Rights Management (DRM) information. Natively supported in Windows Media Player (WMP), MTP enables direct, drag-and-drop synchronization between WMP and a handheld.

“Our Turbo-MTP 2.0 solution has turbo-charged sideloading for MTP handhelds, with internal tests reaching speeds close to 30 Megabytes per second,” said Alakesh Chetia, Vice President of the USB Business Unit at Cypress. “In addition, with Android quickly gaining adoption in top-tier multimedia handhelds, we made it a priority to add drivers to support this user-friendly OS with our West Bridge peripheral controllers. This along with our membership in the Symbian Foundation demonstrates Cypress’s commitment to turbo-charging sideloading with all the latest mobile operating systems.”

In October 2009, Cypress joined the Symbian Foundation, which maintains the code for an open source software platform based on Symbian OS and software assets contributed by Nokia, NTT DOCOMO, and Sony Ericsson, including the S60 and MOAP(S) user interfaces.

West Bridge Antioch devices achieve superior data transfer performance by providing a direct path from Hi-speed USB 2.0 to handset storage devices such as Secure Digital High Capacity (SDHC), MultiMedia Card (MMC), Hard Disk Drive (HDD) and NAND Flash. By fully offloading management of USB and storage from the main baseband processor, the controller saves critical processor resources and allows a mobile handset to maintain full functionality while simultaneously sideloading multimedia files, synchronizing PIM data, or even using the phone as a PC modem. The West Bridge Astoria controllers adds to this performance with a configurable multimedia storage interface and flexible processor interface, easing connections to a broad range of embedded processors and mass storage devices. These features allow Astoria to connect to any embedded processor or DSP, bringing MLC NAND support to new applications including portable media players (PMPs), wireless cards, dongles, portable navigation devices (PNDs), digital cameras, POS terminals and more.

Availability
West Bridge Antioch and Astoria peripheral controllers with the Turbo-MTP 2.0 module are currently in full production. The Turbo-MTP 2.0 firmware module is supported in the West Bridge Antioch Development Kit and the West Bridge Astoria Development Kit.

About the West Bridge Family
Devices in the new West Bridge family of peripheral controllers function as a companion chip to an embedded central processing unit (CPU) to free it from data-intensive operations. In the same way the North Bridge and South Bridge were introduced in the PC architecture to enable the main CPU to evolve independently from quickly changing memory and peripheral interfaces, embedded systems are evolving towards a similar architecture, where a West Bridge device manages the interfaces and offloads from the main CPU specific peripheral-to-peripheral traffic.

The West Bridge family is based on Cypress’s Simultaneous Link to Independent Multimedia (SLIM) architecture, which manages multiple, dedicated paths between peripherals, memory and the processor to allow maximum data throughput. In addition to providing a path to interfaces not supported by the main processor, the SLIM architecture allow direct and independent data transfer from one interface to another, offloading the main CPU, and freeing up its resources for higher system performance.

For a video demo of Turbo-MTP 2.0 capabilities