USB Trickles to Market

Mark Carroll

The Universal Serial Bus (USB) is entering the mainstream PC market, albeit slowly. The new peripheral communications standard was widely accepted late in 1995. Then Intel put its muscle behind the technology with its current Pentium-level chip sets and peripheral chip. Now, a Taiwanese vendor is also offering a USB chip.

VIA Technologies' PCI-to-USB controller, the VT83C572, is designed to be integrated onto either an add-on card or a non-USB-capable mainboard. Key features of the new controller include USB 1.0 compatibility as well as Universal Host Controller Interface (UHCI) compatibility for a data transfer rate of 12 Mbps. Legacy support for keyboards and PS/2 mice is also provided. The p roduct life of this chip is likely to be rather short since new Pentium and Pentium Pro core logic chip sets support USB. USB controllers for peripheral devices are another story, however.

Last February, Intel introduced its 82930A USB peripheral controller, the first USB peripheral chip. It complies with all the USB specifications except one, a very important one: According to an Intel spokesman, this first chip does not support the daisy chaining of peripherals. The ability to hook up all of a PC's peripherals to one bus is one of the main features of USB. This chip's price -- $6 per unit in lots of 10,000 -- is also a barrier.

VIA plans to release a USB peripheral chip in the second quarter. "There's a market for USB peripheral controllers, but it seems to be developing slowly," said VIA president Chen Wen-chi. VIA's USB controller will definitely support daisy-chaining capabilities, Chen said.

Most Taiwanese peripheral vendors state that they support USB but also mention concerns regarding controller costs. For mice and keyboard manuf acturers, whose products retail for $5 to $20, a $6 component is an unlikely possibility. Monitor, scanner, and printer manufacturers have more leeway in absorbing an additional $6 component cost. Monitor manufacturers are, however, designing their USB products as end-use devices. This means they are intended to be the last device on a USB chain and hence don't need a hub controller chip. Some are shipping their USB monitors without even USB cabling, leaving that up to system integrators. Whether USB will take off this year could depend on getting controller costs down.