Gadget Designers Get Chunky Option As USB 20 Gbps Controller Arrives

Infineon is rolling out its next generation of USB controller designed specifically for peripherals. Simply named the EZ-PD FX20, it will support 20 Gbps Type-C devices, including the latest USB4 standard – though USB 3.2 and Thunderbolt 3 are also supported.

While we've seen 20 Gbps connectivity before with many of the latest motherboards featuring at least one USB 3.2 G2x2 (20 Gbps) port, the Infineon EZ-PD FX20 uses USB Type-C connectivity and is designed to deliver throughput for high performance peripherals and devices, for example external SSDs and cameras.

Under the hood of the EZ-PD FX20, Infineon is a using a 32-bit Arm926EJ-S processor and comes with 512kB of flash memory integrated onto the chip. This implementation is designed to ensure latencies are at a minimum, as we would expect some kind of latency penalty by accessing external memory. The FX20 also offers support for up to 12 I/O interfaces, with multi-threaded USB data paths for maximum throughput and bandwidth.

There's more, with Infineon opting to include two Arm Cortex M4 and M0+ cores in addition to the 128KB ROM and 512 kB of flash memory – with a total of seven serial communication blocks.

You've also got a cryptography accelerator for more secure data transfers and a high-bandwidth data subsystem with support for direct memory access (DMA). In theory this allows smoother and streamlined movement of data between the LVDS and LVCMOS interface directly to the I/O connectors. This should mean improved throughput and performance, but may also help boost security and reduce the overall latency.

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Despite the EZ-PD FX20's small 10 x 10mm² ball-grid-array (BGA) package, it should pack a punch, especially in industries and scenarios where connectivity is limited, but high throughput is required.

Also having such a small footprint means that little PCB space is required to implement it wherever needed. One of the interesting elements is that it supports direct USB Type-C connectors without the need for a signal multiplexer, which means manufacturers won't need to implement any additional componentry. To simplify the integration, it comes with an FPGA Mezzanine card to connect it via FPGA.

Infineon certainly proves that big things can come in small (BGA) packages with the EZ-PD FX20.

Not just designed to bring the high performance throughout that 20 Gbps Type-C brings, it's quite compact in terms of controller size. With broad support throughout the Type-C ecosystem including USB4, USB 3.2 and Thunderbolt 4, the market gets another option for manufacturers to implant into their designs.

Infineon said it expects the model to be available in Q1 2025. ®