Intersil Spins A New Prism Reference Design with USB

By Michael Foley

(04/26/01, 12:48:36 PM EDT)

Intersil Corporation released a new reference design with a universal serial bus (USB 1.1) interface integrated into Intersil's PRISM 2.5 chip set. The PRISM 2.5 chip set is designed for small form-factor, embedded and external USB based applications. The standard PRISM core is a single-chip baseband processor (BBP) and medium access controller (MAC) for wireless LAN communications.

This PRISM 2.5-based Reference Design (ISL37300U) will provide all of the technical information necessary for the manufacture of a complete WLAN adaptor in the form of a small mini-USB card that measures approximately 2-1/3 x 1-1/2 inches. The PRISM 2.5 Reference Design includes integrated circuits, software, firmware, and a companion voltage-controlled oscillator to give systems manufacturers 802.11b-compliant wireless networking capability for small handheld devices.

The new PRISM 2.5 Reference Design comes with all manufacturing data and necessary software. The contents include system schematics, board layout, Gerber files, bill-of-materials lists, software, firmware, and documentation. For customers who use the reference design with minimum changes, system design effort and time-to-market can be reduced by up to 80 percent. The new reference design is compatible with Windows 95, 98, 2000, NT 4.0, and Millennium operating systems.