Philips Electronics NV’s Philips Semiconductors arm confirmed its commitment to two industry standards for personal computer bus interconnects, the Universal Serial Bus and the higher bandwidth IEEE 1394-1995 or Firewire with the launch of what it claims are the first products for both standards. The main drivers for the serial bus standards are the growing need to integrate home devices, such as the personal computer, television, video recorder and even telephone, and the requirement for devices to be more connection friendly. The Universal Serial Bus or USB supports modems, telephone, printers, set-top box, mouse, keyboard, joystick, and devices up to digital audio and compressed video at 12Mbps, and the higher bandwidth Firewire, a commercial name to which both Apple Computer Inc and Philips have rights, is for higher bandwidth applications such as Digital Video Disk, Digital VCR, and Network Interface Card, at up to 400Mbps. Both support asynchronous and real time, or isochronous transfer. Philips is developing products for both standards, including the PDI1394L11 audio/video link layer controller, and the PDI1394P11 Physical Layer Interface. The company has also launched the PDIUSBH11, an integrated circuit with the functionality of a four way, standalone USB Hub, with one upstream connection to the computer and four downstream ports for external devices, and announced a USB hub which also provides interface and power management for monitors, in the form of a family of microcontrollers, the P87C390, P83C390 and PP83C190. Finally, Philips has introduced its USB audio board into a single Digital to Analog Converter, for high quality stereo sound, for directly incorporating into speakers, monitors and telephone answering machines . All products are due for mass production around mid 1997.
